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WITH AMERICANS OF 
PAST AND PRESENT DAYS 



WITH AMERICANS OF 
PAST AND PRESENT DAYS 



BY 

J. J. JUSSERAND 

AMBASSADOR OF TRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 






Copyright, 1916, bt 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published May, igi6 




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DEDICATION 

This day, thirteen years ago, a new French am- 
hassador presented his credentials. The ambassador 
was not very old for an ambassador. The President 
was very young for a president, the youngest, in 
fact, the United States ever had. Both, according to 
custom, read set speeches, and there followed a first 
conversation, which had a great many successors, 
touching on a variety of subjects not connected, all 
of them, with diplomacy. In which talk took part 
the genial, learned, and warm-hearted author of the 
*'Pike County Ballads" and of the Life of Lincoln^ 
present at the meeting as Secretary of State of the 
United States. 

This was the first direct impression the newcomer 
had of broad-minded, strenuous America, his earliest 
ones, as a child, having been derived from the illus- 
trated weekly paper received by his family, and which 



vi DEDICATION 

offered to view fancy pictures of the battles between 
the bearded soldiers of Grant and Lee, the ' ' poilus ' ' of 
those days; another impression was from Cooper's 
tales, Deerslayer sharing with Ivanhoe the enthu- 
siasm of the young people at the family hearth. 
Another American impression was received by them 
a little later, when, the Republic having been pro- 
claimed, the street where the family had their winter 
home ceased to be called "Rue de la Reine" and be- 
came " Rue Franklin." 

Thirteen years is a long space of time in an 
ambassador's life; it is not an insignificant one 
in the life of such a youthful nation as the United 
States; I have now witnessed the eleventh part of 
that life. Something like one-fourth or one-fifth of 
the population has been added since I began service 
here. There were forty-five States then instead of 
forty-eight ; the commercial intercourse with France 
I was half of what it is now; the tonnage of the 
American navy was less than half what it is at 
present; the Panama Canal was not yet American; 
the aeroplane was unknown; the automobile prac- 



DEDICATION vii 

tically unused. Among artists, thinkers, humorists, 
critics, scientists, shone La Farge, McKim, Saint- 
Gaudens, William James, Mark Twain, Furness, 
Newcomb, Weir Mitchell, who, leaving a lasting 
fame, have all passed away. 

The speech at the White House was followed by 
many others. Little enough accustomed, up to then, 
to addressing any assembly at any time, I did not 
expect to have much to do in that line ; but I had. 
I soon found that it was not a question of taste and 
personal disposition, but one of courtesy and friend- 
liness. The quick-witted, kindly-disposed, warm- 
hearted audiences of America, ever ready to show 
appreciation for any effort, greatly facilitated mat- 
ters. 

I was thus led by degrees to address gatherings of 
many kinds, in many places, on many subjects, from 
the origins of the War of Independence to refores- 
tation in America, and from the Civil War to in- 
fantile mortality. Many such speeches had to be 
delivered impromptu ; others, luckily for both orator 
and listeners, were on subjects which the former had 



viii DEDICATION 

studied with as much care as the fulfilling of a vari- 
ety of tasks and duties had allowed him. 

An examination of the development of the two coun- 
tries will, I believe, lead any impartial mind to the 
conclusion that, with so many peculiar ties between 
them in the past, a similar goal ahead of them, and, to 
a great extent, similar hard problems to solve, it cannot 
but be of advantage to themselves and to the liberal 
world that the two Republics facing each other across 
the broad ocean, one nearly half a century old, the 
other three times as much, should ever live on terms 
of amity, not to say intimacy, comparing experiences, 
of help to one another whenever circumstances allow : 
this they have been on more than one occasion, and 
will doubtless be again in the future. During our 
present trials the active generosity of American men 
and women has exerted itself in a way that can never 
be forgotten. 

The dean now, not only of the diplomatic corps in 
Washington, but of all my predecessors from the 
early days, when, on a raised platform in Inde- 
pendence Hall, my diplomatic ancestor, Gerard de 



DEDICATION ix 

Rayneval, presented to Congress the first credentials 
brought here from abroad {and Gerard was then, he 
alone, the whole diplomatic body), I have presumed 
to gather together a few studies on some of the men 
or events of most interest from the point of view of 
Franco- American relations. Three addresses are 
added, just as they were delivered. May these 
pages find among readers the same indulgent recep- 
tion their author found among listeners. 

And so, having now lived in America thirteen 
years, offering good wishes to the forty-eight of 
to-day, I dedicate, in memory of former times, the 
following pages 

TO 
THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES. 



J. J. JUSSERAND. 
Washington, February 7, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedication v 

ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FrENCH IN AMERICA, 

from unpublished documents ... 3 

Major L'Enfant and the Federal City 137 - 

Washington and the French 199 

Abraham Lincoln 277 

The Franklin Medal 309 

Horace Howard Furness 319 

From War to Peace 333 



ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN 
AMERICA 

FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS 



ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN 
AMERICA 

FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS 

THE American war had been for five years 
in progress; for two years a treaty of alli- 
ance, having as sole object "to maintain 
effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and indepen- 
dence, absolute and unlimited, of the United 
States," bound us French to the "insurgents"; 
successes and reverses followed each other in 
turn: Brooklyn, Trenton, Brandywine, Saratoga. 
Quite recently the news had come of the double 
victory at sea and on land of d'Estaing at Grenada, 
and Paris had been illuminated. The lights were 
scarcely out when news arrived of the disaster 
of the same d'Estaing at Savannah. All France 
felt anxious concerning the issue of a war which 
had lasted so long and whose end continued to 
be doubtful. 

When, in the first months of 1780, the report 
went about -that a great definitive effort was to 
be attempted, that it was not this time a question 
of sending ships to the Americans, but of sending 
an army, and that the termination of the great 
drama was near, the enthusiasm was unbounded. 

3 



4 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

All wanted to take part. There was a prospect 
of crossing the seas, of succoring a people fight- 
ing for a sacred cause, a people of whom all our 
volunteers praised the virtues; the people led by 
Washington, and represented in Paris by Franklin. 
An ardor as of crusaders inflamed the hearts of 
French youths, and the intended expedition was, 
in fact, the most important that France had 
launched beyond the seas since the distant time 
of the crusades. The cause was a truly sacred 
one, the cause of liberty, a magical word which 
then stirred the hearts of the many. "Why is 
liberty so rare?" Voltaire had said — "Because 
the most valuable of possessions." 

All those who were so lucky as to be allowed 
to take part in the expedition were convinced 
that they would witness memorable, perhaps 
unique, events, and it turned out, indeed, that 
they were to witness a campaign which, with the 
battle of Hastings, where the fate of England was 
decided in 1066, and that of Bouvines, which 
made of France in 12 14 a great nation, was to be 
one of the three military actions with greatest 
consequences in which for the last thousand 
years the French had participated. 

A striking result of this state of mind is that 
an extraordinary number of those who went noted 
down their impressions, kept journals, drew 
sketches. Never perhaps during a military cam- 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 5 

paign was so much writing done, nor were so 
many albiims filled with drawings. 

Notes, letters, journals, sketches have come 
down to us in large quantities, and from all man- 
ner of men, for the passion of observing and nar- 
rating was common to all kinds of people: jour- 
nals and memoirs of army chiefs like Rochambeau, 
or chiefs of staff like Chastellux, a member of 
the French Academy, adapter of Shakespeare, 
and author of a Felicite Publique, which, Franklin 
said, showed him to be "a real friend of human- 
ity"; narratives of a regimental chaplain, like 
Abbe Robin, of a sceptical rake like the Duke de 
Lauzun, the new Don Juan, whose battle stories 
alternate with his love reminiscences, handsome, 
impertinent, licentious, an excellent soldier withal, 
bold and tenacious, marked, like several of his 
companions, to mount the revolutionary scaffold ; 
journals of officers of various ranks, like Count de 
Deux-Ponts, Prince de Broglie, he, too, marked for 
the scaffold; Count de Segur, son of the marshal, 
himself afterward an Academician and an ambas- 
sador; Mathieu- Dumas, future minister of war of 
a future King of Naples, who bore the then un- 
known name of Joseph Bonaparte; the Swedish 
Count Axel de Fersen, one of Rochambeau's aides, 
who was to organize the French royal family's 
flight to Varennes, and to die massacred by the 
mob in his own coimtry; notes, map, and sketches 



6 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

of Baron Cromot-Dubourg, another of Rocham- 
beau's aides ; journal, too, among many others, of a 
modest quartermaster like Blanchard, who gives a 
note quite apart, observes what others do not, 
and whose tone, as that of a subordinate, is in 
contrast with the superb ways of the "seigneurs" 
his companions. 

From page to page, turning the leaves, one sees 
appear, without speaking of Lafayette, Kosciusko, 
and the first enthusiasts, many names just emerg- 
ing from obscurity, never to sink into it again: 
Berthier, La Perouse, La Touche-Treville, the 
Lameth brothers, Bougainville, Custine, the 
Bouille of the flight to Varennes, the La Cloche- 
terie of the fight of La Belle Poule, the Duportail 
who was to be minister of war under the Constit- 
uent Assembly, young Talleyrand, brother of the 
future statesman, young Mirabeau, brother of 
the orator, himself usually known for his portly 
dimensions as Mirabeau-tonneau, ever ready with 
the cup or the sword, young Saint-Simon, not yet 
a pacifist, and not yet a Saint-Simonian,^ Suf- 
fren, in whose squadron had embarked the futiu-e 
Director Barras, an officer then in the regiment of 
Pondichery. All France was really represented, 

^ Concerning his American campaign, in which he greatly distin- 
guished himself, he wrote later: "In itself, war did not interest me, 
but its object interested me keenly, and I willingly took part in its 
labors. I said to myself: ' I want the end; I must adopt the means.' " 
CEuvres, 1865, I, 11. He was wounded and promoted. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AAIERICA 7 

to some extent that of the past, to a larger one 
that of the future. 

Many of those journals have been published 
(Cromot-Dubourg's only in an English version 
printed in America^) ; others have been lost ; others 
remain unpublished, so that after all that has been 
said, and well said, it still remains possible, with 
the help of new guides and new documents, to 
follow Washington and Rochambeau once more, 
and in a different company, during the momen- 
tous journey which led them from the Hudson to 
the York River. The Washington papers and the 
Rochambeau papers, used only in part, are pre- 
served in the Library of Congress. A juvenile 
note, in contrast with the quiet dignity of the 
official reports by the heads of the army, is given 
by the unprinted journal, a copy of which is 
also preserved in the same library, kept by one 
more of Rochambeau's aides, Louis Baron de 
Closen, an excellent observer, gay, warm-hearted, 
who took seriously all that pertained to duty, 
and merrily all the rest, especially mishaps. Use- 
ful information is also given by some unprinted 
letters of George Washington, some with the 
superscription still preserved: "On public service 
— to his Excellency, Count de Rochambeau, Wil- 
liamsburg, Virginia," the whole text often in the 
great chief's characteristic handwriting, clear and 

* Magazine of American History, March, 1880, ff. 



8 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

steady, neither slow nor hasty, with nothing 
blurred and nothing omitted, with no trepidation, 
no abbreviation, the writing of a man with a 
clear conscience and clear views, superior to for- 
tune, and the convinced partisan, in every cir- 
cumstance throughout life, of the straight line. 

The British Government has, moreover, most 
liberally opened its archives, so that, both through 
the recriminatory pamphlets printed in London 
after the disaster and the despatches now acces- 
sible, one can know what was said day by day in 
New York and out of New York, in the redoubts 
at Yorktown, and in the French and American 
trenches around the place. 



Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de 
Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, aged then fifty- 
five, and Washington's senior by seven years, was 
in his house, still in existence. Rue du Cherche- 
Midi, Paris, ^ at the beginning of March, 1780; 
he was ill and about to leave for his castle of Ro- 
chambeau in Vendomois; post-horses were in 
readiness when, in the middle of the night, he re- 
ceived, he says in his memoirs,^ a "courrier bring- 
ing him the order to go to Versailles and receive 
the instructions of his Majesty." For some time 
nimors had been afloat that the great attempt 
would soon be made. He was informed that the 
news was true, and that he would be placed at 
the head of the army sent to the assistance of the 
Americans. 

The task was an extraordinary one. He would 
have to reach the New World with a body of 
troops packed on slow transports, to avoid the 
English fleets, to fight in a country practically un- 

' A quite handsome house, now the offices of the Ministry of Labor. 
The gardens no longer exist. 

^ Memoires militaires, historiques et politiqiies de Rochambeau, ancien 
marechal de France et grand officier de la Legion d'honneur, Paris, 
1809, 2 vols., I, 235. 

9 



10 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

known, by the side of men not less so, and whom 
we had been accustomed to fight rather than be- 
friend, and for a cause which had never before 
eHcited enthusiasm at Versailles, the cause of re- 
publican liberty. 

This last point was the strangest of all, so 
strange that even Indians, friends of the French in 
former days, asked Rochambeau, when they saw 
him in America, how it was that his King could 
think fit to help other people against "their own 
father," their King. Rochambeau replied that 
the latter had been too hard on his subjects, that 
they were right, therefore, in shaking off the yoke, 
and we in helping them to secure "that natural 
liberty which God has conferred on man." 

This answer to "Messieurs les Sauvages," is an 
enlightening one; it shows what was the latent 
force that surmounted all obstacles and caused 
the French nation to stand as a whole, from be- 
ginning to end, in favor of the Americans, to ap- 
plaud a treaty of alliance which, while entailing 
the gravest risks, forbade us all conquest, and to 
rejoice enthusiastically at a peace which after a 
victorious war added nothing to our possessions. 
This force was the increasing passion among the 
French for precisely "that natural liberty which 
God has conferred on man." 

Hatred of England, quickened though it had 
been by the harsh conditions of the treaty of 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 11 

Paris bereaving us of Canada, in 1763, had much 
less to do with it than is sometimes alleged. Such 
a feeling existed, it is true, in the hearts of some 
of the leaders, but not of all; it did in the minds 
also of some of the officers, but again not of all. 
What predominated in the mass of the nation, 
irrespective of any other consideration, was sym- 
pathy for men who wanted to fight injustice and 
to be free. The cause of the insurgents was pop- 
ular because it was associated with the notion of 
liberty; people did not look beyond.^ 

It is often forgotten that this time was not in 
France a period of Anglophobia, but of Anglo- 
mania. Necker, so influential, and who then held 
the purse-strings, was an Anglophile; so was 
Prince de Montbarey, minister of war; so was 
that Duke de Lauzun who put an end for a time 
to his love-affairs and came to America at the head 
of his famous legion. All that was English was 
admired and, when possible, imitated: manners, 
philosophy, sports, clothes, parliamentary insti- 
tutions, Shakespeare, just translated by Le Tour- 
neur, with the King and Queen as patrons of the 



^ "On a soutenu," said Pontgibaud, later Comte de More, one of 
Lafayette's aides, in a conversation with Alexander Hamilton, 
"que I'interet bien entendu de la France etait de rester neutre et 
de profiter de I'embarras de I'Angleterre pour se faire restituer le 
Canada." But this would have been going against the general 
trend of public opinion, and a contrary course was followed. M^- 
moires dti Comte de More, Paris, 1898, p. 169. 



U ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

undertaking; but, above all, wrote Count de 
Segur, "we were all dreaming of the liberty, at 
once calm and lofty, enjoyed by the entire body 
of citizens of Great Britain."^ 

Such is the ever-recurring word. Liberty, phi- 
lanthropy, natural rights, these were the magic 
syllables to conjure with. "All France," read we 
in Grimm and Diderot's correspondence, "was 
filled with an unbounded love for humanity," and 
felt a passion for "those exaggerated general max- 
ims which raise the enthusiasm of young men and 
which would cause them to run to the world's 
end to help a Laplander or a Hottentot." The 
ideas of Montesquieu, whose Esprit des Lois had 
had twenty-two editions in one year, of Voltaire, 
of d'Alembert were in the ascendant, and liberal 
thinkers saw in the Americans propagandists for 
their doctrine. General Howe having occupied 
New York in 1776, Voltaire wrote to d'Alembert: 
"The troops of Doctor Franklin have been beaten 
by those of the King of England. Alas ! philos- 
ophers are being beaten everywhere. Reason and 
liberty are unwelcome in this world." 

Another of the master minds of the day, the 
economist, thinker, and reformer Turgot, the one 
whose advice, if followed, would have possibly 
secured for us a bloodless revolution, was of the 

» Memoires, souvenirs et anecdotes, Paris, 1824, 3 vols., I, 140. Eng- 
lish translation, London, 1825. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 13 

same opinion. In the famous letter written by 
him on the 2 2d of March, 1778, to his EngHsh 
friend, Doctor Price, Turgot showed himself, just 
as the French nation was, ardently pro-American, 
but not anti-English. He deplored the impend- 
ing war, which ought to have been avoided by 
England's acknowledging in time "the folly of its 
absurd project to subjugate the Americans. . . . 
/it is a strange thing that it be not yet a common- 
place truth to say that no nation can ever have 
the right to govern another nation; that such a 
government has no other foundation than force, 
which is also the foundation of brigandage and 
tyranny; that a people's tyranny is, of all tyran- 
nies, the most cruel, the most intolerable, and 
the one which leaves the least resources to the 
oppressed . . . for a multitude does not calculate, 
does not feel remorse, and it bestows on itself 
glory when all that it deserves is shame."/ 

The Americans, according to Turgot, must be 
free, not only for their own sake, but for the sake 
of humanity ; an experiment of the utmost import 
is about to begin, and should succeed. He added 
this, the worthy forecast of a generous mind : "It 
is impossible not to form wishes for that people to 
reach the utmost prosperity it is capable of. 
That people is the hope of mankind. It must 
show to the world by its example, that men can 
be free and tranquil, and can do without the chains 



14 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

that tyrants and cheats of all garb have tried to 
lay on them under pretense of public good. It 
must give the example of political liberty, religious 
liberty, commercial and industrial liberty. The 
shelter which it is going to offer to the oppressed 
of all nations will console the earth. The ease 
with which men will be able to avail themselves 
of it and escape the effects of a bad government 
will oblige governments to open their eyes and to 
be just. The rest of the world will perceive by 
degrees the emptiness of the illusions on which 
politicians have festered." Toward England Tur- 
got has a feeling of regret on account of its poli- 
cies, but no trace of animosity; and, on the con- 
trary, the belief that, in spite of what some people 
of note were alleging, the absolutely certain loss 
of her American colonies would not result in a 
diminution of her power, "This revolution will 
prove, maybe, as profitable to you as to America."^ 
Not less characteristic of the times and of the 
same thinker's turn of mind is a brief memorial 
written by him for the King shortly after, when 
Captain Cook was making his third voyage of 
discovery, the one from which he never returned. 
"Captain Cook," Turgot said, "is probably on 
his way back to Europe. His expedition having 
no other object than the progress of human knowl- 
edge, and interesting, therefore, all nations, it 

1 (Euvres, vol. IX, Paris, 1810, pp. 377 ff. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 15 

would be worthy of the King's magnanimity not 
to allow that the result be jeopardized by the 
chances of war." Orders should be given to all 
French naval officers "to abstain from any hos- 
tile act against him or his ship, and allow him to 
freely continue his navigation, and to treat him 
in every respect as the custom is to treat the offi- 
cers and ships of neutral and friendly countries."* 
The King assented, and had our cruisers notified 
of the sort of sacred character which they would 
have to recognize in that ship of the enemy: a 
small fact in itself, but showing the difference be- 
tween the wars in those days and in ours, when 
we have had to witness the wanton destruction of 
the Louvain library, the shelling of the Reims 
cathedral, and the Arras town hall. 
/ An immense aspiration was growing in France 
for more equality, fewer privileges, simpler lives 
among the great, less hard ones among the lowly, 
more accessible knowledge, the free discussion by 
all of the common interests of all. A fact of 
deepest import struck the least attentive : French 
masses were becoming more and more thinking 
masses. One should not forget that between the 
end of the American Revolution and the begin- 
ning of the French one only six years elapsed, be- 
tween the American and the French Constitu- 
tions but four years. At the very time of the 

'^(Euvres, IX, 417. 



16 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Yorktown campaign Necker was issuing his cele- 
brated Compte Rendu, which he addressed, "pro 
forma" to the King, and in reaHty to the nation.^ 
This famous account of the condition of France, 
the piece of printed matter which was most widely 
read in those days, began, "Sire," but ended: 
"In writing this I have proudly counted on that 
public opinion which evil-minded persons may try 
to crush or to distort, but which, in spite of their 
efforts. Truth and Justice carry along in their 
wake." 

To which may be added as another token of 
the same state of mind that the then famous 
Count de Guibert had some time before printed 
his Essay on Tactics, so full of advanced ideas, 
notably on the necessary limitation of the power 
of kings, that it had been suppressed by the au- 
thorities; and he had dedicated it not to a prince 
nor to any man, but to his mother country: "A 
ma Patrie." ^ 

Six years after the end of the American war, on 
January 24, 1789, the King of France ordered 
the drawing up of the famous Cahiers, desiring, 



* January, 1781. 

" He ends his dedication stating that he may fail and may have 
dreamed a mere dream, but he should not be blamed: "Le delire d'un 
citoyen qui reve au bonheur de sa patrie a quelque chose de respec- 
table." Essai General de Tactique precede d'un Discours siir I'etat 
actnel de la politique et de la science militaire en Europe, London, 
1772 ; Li^ge, 1775. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 17 

he said, that "from the extremities of his kingdom 
and the most imknown habitations every one 
should be assured of a means of conveying to 
him his wishes and complaints." And the Cahiers, 
requesting liberties very similar to those of the 
Amen^afts, came indeed from the remotest parts 
of France, the work of everybody, of quasi-peasants 
sometimes, who would offer excuses for their wild 
orthography and grammar. The notes and let- 
ters of the volunteers of our Revolution, sons of 
peasants or artisans, surprise us by the mass of 
general ideas and views which abound in them. 
It was not, therefore, a statement of small import 
that Franklin had conveyed to Congress when he 
wrote from France: "The united bent of the 
nation is manifestly in our favor." And he de- 
plored elsewhere that some could think that an 
appeal to France's own interest was good policy: 
"Telling them their commerce will be advantaged 
by our success and that it is their interest to help 
us, seems as much as to say: 'Help us and we shall 
not be obliged to you.' Such indiscreet and im- 
proper language has been sometimes held here by 
some of our people and produced no good effect." 
The truth is, he said also, that "this nation is 
fond of glory, particularly that of protecting the 
oppressed." ^ 

The treaty of commerce, accompanying the 

* Writings, Smythe, VIII, 390, 391. 



18 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

treaty of alliance of 1778,^ had been in itself a 
justification of this judgment. Help from abroad 
was so pressingly needed in America that almost 
any advantages requested by France as a condi- 
tion would have been granted; but that strange 
sight was seen : advantages being offered, unasked, 
by one party, and declined by the other. France 
decided at once not to accept anything as a recom- 
pense, not even Canada, if that were wrested from 
the EngHsh, in spite of Canada's having been 
French from the first, and having but recently 
ceased to be such. The fight was not for recom- 
pense but for liberty, and Franklin could write 
to Congress that the treaty of commerce was one 
to which all the rest of the world, in accordance 
with France's own wishes, was free to accede, 
when it chose, on the same footing as herself, 
England included.^ 

This was so peculiar that many had doubts; 
John Adams never lost his; Washington himself 
had some, and when plans were submitted to him 
for an action in Canada he wondered, as he wrote, 
whether there was not in them "more than the 

1 Both signed at Paris on the same day, February 6, 1778. 

2 Vergennes had written in the same way to the Marquis de Noailles, 
French ambassador in London: "Our engagements are simple; they 
are aggressive toward nobody; we have desired to secure for our- 
selves no advantage of which other nations might be jealous, and 
which the Americans themselves might regret, in the course of time, 
to have granted us." Doniol, Participation de la France d, VetaUisse- 
ment des Etats Unis, II, 822. 



ROCHAT^IBEAU IN AMERICA 19 

disinterested zeal of allies."^ What would take 
place at the peace, if the allies were victorious ? 
Would not France require, in one form or another, 
some advantages for herself ? But she did not ; 
her peace was to be like her war, pro-American 
rather than anti-English. 

Another striking trait in the numerous French 
accounts which have come down to us of this cam- 
paign against the English is the small space that 
the English, as a nation, occupy in them. The 
note that predominates is enthusiasm for the 
Americans, noj;^ hatred for their enemies. "In 
France," wrote Segur in his memoirs, "in spite 
of the habit of a long obedience to arbitrary power, 
the cause of the American insurgents fixed the 
attention and excited the interest of all. From 
every side public opinion was pressing the royal 
government to declare itself in favor of republican 
liberty, and seemed to reproach it for its slowness 
and timidity."^ Of any revenge to be taken on 
the enemy, not a word. "No one among us," he 
said further, "thought of a revolution in France, 
but it was rapidly taking place in our minds. 
Montesquieu had brought to light again the long- 
buried title-deeds consecrating the rights of the 
people. Mature men were studying and envying 
the laws of England." 

Slimming up the motives of the new crusaders, 

^November ii, 1778. 



20 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

who were "starting off to the war in the name of 
philanthropy, ' ' he found two : ' ' One quite reason- 
able and conscientious, the desire to well serve 
King and country . . . another more unique, a 
veritable enthusiasm for the cause of American 
liberty." Ministers hesitated, on account of the 
greatness of the risk, "but they were, little by 
little, carried away by the torrent." During the 
sea voyage only the chiefs knew exactly whither 
they were going; some officers thought at one 
time they might have to fight elsewhere than in 
America. One of Rochambeau's officers, the afore- 
mentioned Mathieu-Dumas, confided his misgiv- 
ings to his journal: "Above all," he wrote, "I 
had heartily espoused the cause of the inde- 
pendence of the Americans, and I should have 
felt extreme regret at losing the honor of combat- 
ing for their liberty."^ Of the English, again, not 
a word; what he longed for, like so many others, 
was less to fight against the English than for the 
Americans. 

More striking, perhaps, than all the rest: 
shortly after we had decided to take part in the 
war, the question of our motives and of a possible 
annihilation of England as a great power was 
plainly put, in the course of a familiar conversa- 
tion, by the president of Yale University to the 

' Souvenirs du Lieutenant General Comte Mathieu-Dumas, de lyyo 
d iSj6, Paris, 3 vols., I, 36. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 21 

future signer of the Louisiana Treaty, Barbe- 
Marbois, then secretary of our legation in the 
United States. "Mons. Marbois," Ezra Stiles 
confided to his diary, on the occasion of the French 
minister, La Luzerne, and his secretary's visit to 
Yale, "is a learned civilian, a councillor of the 
Parliament of Metz, aet. 35, as I judge; speaks 
English very tolerably, much better than his Ex- 
cellency the minister. He was very inquisitive 
for books and American histories. . . . Among 
other things I asked Mons. Marbois whether the 
Powers of Europe would contentedly see Great 
Britain annihilated. 

"He said, no; it would be for the interest of 
Europe that Britain should have weight in the 
balances of power. . . . France did not want to 
enlarge her dominions by conquest or otherwise." ^ 

For the French diplomat, a man of great ability 
and well informed, addressing, as he was, one to 
whom a "yes" instead of a "no" would have 
caused no pain, far from it, the motive of our 
actions was neither a prospective loss by England 
of her rank nor the increase of our own posses- 
sions, but simply American independence. 
^Literary Diary, September 11, 1779; New York, 1901, 3 vols. 



II 

Aware of the importance and difficulty of the 
move it had decided upon, the French Govern- 
ment had looked for a trained soldier, a man of 
decision and of sense, one who would understand 
Washington and be understood by him, would 
keep in hand the enthusiasts under his orders, 
and would avoid ill-prepared, risky ventures. The 
time of the d'Estaings was gone; definitive results 
were to be sought. The government considered 
it could do no better than to select Rochambeau. 
It could, indeed, do no better. 

The future marshal of France had been first 
destined to priesthood for no other reason than 
that he was a second son, and he was about to 
receive the tonsure when his elder brother died, 
and Bishop de Crussol, who had been supervising 
Donatien's ecclesiastical studies, came one day to 
him and said: "You must forget all I have told 
you up to now; you have become the eldest of 
your family and you must now serve your coun- 
try with as much zeal as you would have served 
God in the ecclesiastical state." 

Rochambeau did so. He was appointed an 
officer and served on his first campaign in Ger- 

22 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 23 

many at sixteen, fought under Marshal de Saxe, 
was a colonel at twenty-two (Washington was to 
become one also at twenty- two), received at Lau- 
feldt his two first wounds, of which he nearly died. 
At the head of the famous Auvergne regiment, 
"Auvergne sans tache" (Auvergne the spotless), 
as it was called, he took part in the chief battles 
of the Seven Years' War, notably in the victory 
of Klostercamp, where spotless Auvergne had 58 
officers and 800 soldiers killed or woimded, the 
battle made memorable by the episode of the 
Chevalier d'Assas, who went to his heroic death 
in the fulfilment of an order given by Rochambeau. 
The latter was again severely wounded, but, lean- 
ing on two soldiers, he could remain at his post 
till the day was won. 

On the opposite side of the same battle-fields 
were fighting many destined, like Rochambeau 
himself, to take part in the American war; it was 
like a preliminary rehearsal of the drama that 
was to be. At the second battle of Minden, in 
1759, where the father of Lafayette was killed, 
Rochambeau covered the retreat, while in the 
English ranks Lord Comwallis was learning his 
trade, as was too, but less brilliantly. Lord George 
Germain, the future colonial secretary of the 
Yorktown period. At Johannisberg, in the same 
war, Clinton, future commander-in-chief at New 
York, was wounded, while here and there in the 



24 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

French army such officers distinguished them- 
selves as Bougainville, back from Ticonderoga, 
and not yet a sailor, Chastellux, already a colonel, 
no longer a secretary of embassy, not yet an Acad- 
emician, and my predecessor, La Luzerne, an offi- 
cer of cavalry, not yet a diplomat, who was to 
be the second minister ever accredited to America, 
where his name is not forgotten. 

When still very young Rochambeau had con- 
tracted one of those marriages so numerous in 
the eighteenth, as in every other century, of 
which nothing is said in the memoirs and letters 
of the period, because they were what they should 
be, happy ones. Every right-minded and right- 
hearted man will find less pleasure in the sauciest 
anecdote told by Lauzim than in the simple and 
brief lines written in his old age by Rochambeau: 
' ' My^ good star gave me such a wife as I could 
desire; she has been for me a cause of constant 
happiness throughout life, and I hope, on my 
side, to have made her happy by the tenderest 
amity, which has never varjed an instant during 
nearly sixty years." The issue of that union. 
Viscount Rochambeau, from his youth the com- 
panion in arms of his father, an officer at four- 
teen, accompanied him to the States, and was, 
after a career of devotion to his country, to die a 
general at Leipzig, in the " Battle of Nations." 

Informed at Versailles of the task he would 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 25 

have to perfonn, the exact nature of which was 
kept a secret from the troops themselves now 
gathered at Brest, Rochambeau hastened to for- 
get his "rhiimatisme inflammatoire " and set to 
work to get everything in readiness, collecting in- 
formation, talking with those who knew America, 
and noting down in his green-garbed registers, 
which were to accompany him in his campaign, 
the chief data thus secured. He also addressed 
to himself, as a reminder, a number of useful 
recommendations such as these: "To take with 
us a quantity of flints, , . . much flour and bis- 
cuit; have bricks as ballast for the ships, to be 
used for ovens; to try to bring with us all we 
want and not to have to ask from the Americans 
who are themselves in want ... to have a copy 
of the Atlas brought from Philadelphia by Mr. 
de Lafayette ... to have a portable printing- 
press, like that of Mr. d'Estaing, handy for proc- 
lamations . . . siege artillery is indispensable." 
Some of the notes are of grave import and were 
not lost sight of throughout the campaign : ' ' Noth- 
ing without naval supremacy." 

To those intrusted with the care of loading the 
vessels he recommends that all articles of the 
same kind be not placed on the same ship, "so 
that in case of mishap to any ship the whole sup- 
ply of any kind of provisions be not totally lost." 

As to the pay for himself and his officers, he 



26 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

writes to the minister that he leaves that to him: 
"Neither I nor mine desire anything extravagant; 
we should like to be able to go to this war at our 
own expense." But the government did not 
want him to be hampered by any lack of funds, 
and allotted him the then considerable sum of 
twelve thousand francs a month, and four thou- 
sand a month the generals under him. 

At Brest, where he now repaired, Rochambeau 
found that the ships were not so numerous as 
expected, so that only the first division of his 
army could embark imder Admiral Chevalier 
de Temay: a sad blow for the commander-in- 
chief. He prescribed that care be at least taken 
to select for the passage the most robust men, 
and, in order to save space, that all horses be left 
behind, himself giving the example. "I have," 
Rochambeau writes to Prince de Montbarey, the 
minister of war, ' ' to part company with two battle- 
horses that I can never replace. I do so with the 
greatest sorrow, but I do not want to have to re- 
proach myself with their having taken up the 
room of twenty men who could have embarked 
in their stead." Officers, soldiers, ammunition, 
artillery, spare clothing for the troops, and even 
the printing-press go on board at last. Men and 
things are close-packed, but end by shaking down 
into place; all will go well, Rochambeau writes to 
the minister, "without any overcrowding of the 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 27 

troops; the rule for long jotimeys having been ob- 
served, namely one soldier for every two tons 
burden." 

When all were there, however, forming a total 
of 5,000 men, the maximum was so truly reached 
that a number of yoiing men, some belonging to 
the best-known French families, who were arriv- 
ing at Brest from day to day, in the hope of being 
added to the expedition, had to be sent back. 
The fleet was already on the high seas when a 
cutter brought the government's last instructions 
to Rochambeau. On the boat were two brothers 
called Berthier, who besought to be allowed to 
volimteer. "They have joined us yesterday," the 
general writes to the minister, "and have handed 
us your letters. . . . They were dressed in linen 
vests and breeches, asking to be admitted as mere 
sailors." But there was really no place to put 
them. "Those poor young men are interesting 
and in despair." They had, nevertheless, to be 
sent back, but managed to join the army later, 
and so it was that Alexander Berthier began in 
the Yorktown campaign a military career which 
he was to end as marshal of France, and Prince 
of Wagram and Neufchatel. / 

The departure, which it was necessary to hasten 
while the English were not yet ready, was beset 
with dijEficulties. Tempests, contrary winds and 
other mishaps had caused vexatious delay; the 



28 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Comtesse de Noailles and the Conquerant had come 
into colHsion and had had to be repaired. ' ' Luck- 
ily," wrote Rochambeau to Montbarey, with his 
usual good humor, "it rains also on Portsmouth." 
At last, on the 2d of May, 1780, the fleet of seven 
ships of the line and two frigates conveying thirty- 
six transports, weighed anchor for good. "We 
shall have the start of Graves," the general wrote 
again, "for he will have to use the same wind to 
leave Portsmouth," and he added, with a touch 
of emotion at this solemn moment : "I recommend 
this expedition to the friendship of my dear old 
comrade, and to his zeal for the good of the state." 

At sea now for a long voyage, two or three 
months, perhaps, with the prospect of calms, of 
storms, of untoward encounters, of scurvy for the 
troops. On board the big Due de Bourgogne, of 
eighty guns, with Admiral de Ternay, Rocham- 
beau adds now and then paragraphs to a long 
report which is a kind of journal, assuring the 
minister, after the first fortnight, that all is well 
on board: "We have no men sick other than 
those which the sea makes so, among whom the 
Marquis de Laval and my son play the most 
conspicuous part." He prepares his general in- 
structions to the troops. 

On board the smaller craft life was harder and 
numerous unflattering descriptions have come 
down to us in the journals kept by so many 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 29 

officers of the army, especially in that of the afore- 
mentioned young captain, Louis Baron de Closen, 
later one of the aides of Rochambeau. 

He confesses, but with no undue sentimentalism, 
that he was saddened at first to some extent at 
the prospect of an absence that might be a long 
one, particularly when thinking "of a charming 
young fiancee, full of wit and grace. . . . My 
profession, however, does not allow me to yield 
too much to sensibility; so I am now perfectly 
resigned." He was assigned to the Comtesse de 
Noailles, of three hundred tons (the Ecureuil, 
that kept her company, was of only one hundred 
and eighty). Each officer had received fifty 
francs for extra purchases; they found it was 
little, but when they had made their purchases 
they found that it had been much, so great was 
the difficulty in stowing their possessions on the 
ship. At last, "after much trouble and many 
words — a few crowns here and there — each of us 
succeeded in squeezing himself and his belong- 
ings in those so-detested sabots."'^ Closen, for 
his part, had provisioned himself with "sugar, 
lemons, and syrups in quantity." 

The crew consisted of forty-five men, "half of 
them Bretons, half Provencals," speaking their 
own dialect, "and who, little accustomed to the 
language used by their naval officers when giving 

^ Wooden shoes, a nickname for a ship of mean estate. 



30 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

their orders," were apt to misunderstand them, 
hence the bad manoeuvring which sent the Com- 
tesse de Noailles right across the Conquer ant. A 
sad case; would they be left behind, and miss 
taking part in the expedition? By great luck 
"there were but the bowsprit, the spritsails, and 
the figure of the charming countess which were 
broken to pieces." Repairs are begun with all 
speed. Mr. de Deux-Ponts promises fifteen louis 
to the workmen if the ship is ready the next day 
at noon. "One more reassuring circinnstance 
was that Mr. de Kersabiec, a very expert naval 
officer, was intrusted with the care of looking 
after the workmen." He never left them, and 
"encouraged them by extra distributions. I was 
intimate with all the family, having spent the 
winter at Saint-Pol-de-Leon; the souvenir of 
which still gives me pleasure." The next day all 
was right once more: "After eleven, the amiable 
countess was taken again — with no head, it is 
true, like so many other countesses — beyond the 
harbor chain." It was possible to start with the 
rest of the fleet: the high fortifications overlook- 
ing the harbor, the villages along the coast, so 
many sails curved by a wind "joli-frais," the clear 
sky, "all united to form the most beautiful pic- 
ture at the time of our start. ... So many 
vessels under way offered a truly imposing sight." 
Every-day life now begins on the small craft; 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 31 

it is hard at first to get accustomed, so tight- 
packed is the ship, but one gets inured to it, in 
spite of the "buzzing of so numerous a company," 
of the lack of breathing-space, and of what peo- 
ple breathe being made unpleasant by all sorts 
of "exhalations" from the ship, the masses of hu- 
manity on board, "and a few dogs." Closen has 
the good luck not to be inconvenienced by the 
sea, settles in his comer, and from that moment 
till the end takes pleasure in watching life aroimd 
him. He learns how to make nautical observa- 
tions, describes his companions in his journal, and 
especially the captain, a typical old tar who has 
an equal faith in the efficacy of hymns and of\ 
oaths. "Prayer is said twice a day on the deck, 
which does not prevent there being much irre- 
ligion among seamen. I have often heard our 
captain swear and curse and freely use the worst 
sailors' language, while he was praying and chant- 
ing: 

Je mets ma confiance, 
Vierge, en votre secours, 
Et quand ma derniere heure 
Viendra, guidez mon sort; 
Obtenez que je meure 
De la plus sainte mort." 

Various incidents break the monotony of the 
journey. On the i8th of June the Surveillante 



S2 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

captures an English corsair, which is a joy, but 
they learn from her the fall of Charleston and 
the surrender of Lincoln, which gives food for 
thought. Nothing better shows the difference 
between old-time and present-time navigation 
than the small fact that while on the way they 
indulge in fishing. On board the Comtesse de 
Noailles they capture flying-fishes, which are 
"very tender and delicious to eat, fried in fresh 
butter, like gudgeons." 

An occasion offers to open fight, with the ad- 
vantage of numerical superiority, on six English 
vessels; some shots are exchanged, but with great 
wisdom, and, in spite of the grumblings of all his 
people, Temay refuses to really engage them, and 
continues his voyage. "He had his convoy too 
much at heart," says Closen, "and he knew too 
well the importance of our expedition, his positive 
orders being that he must make our army arrive 
as quickly as possible, for him not to set aside 
all the entreaties of the yoimg naval officers 
who, I was told, were very outspoken on that 
score, as well as most of the land officers, who 
know nothing of naval matters." 

The event fully justified Temay, for Graves, 
whose mission it had been to intercept him and 
his slow and heavy convoy, missed his oppor- 
tunity by twenty-four hours only, reaching New 
York, where he joined forces with Arbuthnot 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 33 

just as our own ships were safe at Newport. The 
sHghtest delay on Temay's part might have been 
fatal. 

The more so since, when nearing the coast our 
fleet had fallen into fogs. "Nothing so sad and 
dangerous at sea as fogs," Closen sententiously 
writes; "besides the difficulty of avoiding col- 
lisions in so numerous a fleet, each vessel, in order 
to shun them, tries to gain space; thus one may 
chance to get too far from the centre. The stand- 
ing orders for our convoy were, in view of avoid- 
ing those inconveniences, to beat the drums every 
quarter of an hour or fire petards. The men-of- 
war fired their guns or sent rockets. The speed- 
limit was three knots during the fog, so that each 
vessel might, as far as possible, continue keeping 
company with its neighbor." In spite of all 
which the He de France was lost, and there was 
great anxiety; she was not seen again during the 
rest of the journey, but she appeared later, quite 
safe, at Boston. 

The landing orders of Rochambeau, making 
known now to all concerned the intentions of the 
government, were clear and peremptory. Drawn 
up by him on board the Due de Bourgogne, he had 
caused copies to be carried to the chiefs of the 
several corps on board the other ships: 

"The troops which his Majesty is sending to 
America are auxiliary to those of the United 



34 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

States, his allies, and placed under the orders of 
General Washington, to whom the honors of a 
marshal of France will be rendered. The same 
with the President of Congress," which avoided 
the possibility of any trouble as to precedence, 
no one in the French army having such a rank. 
"In case of an equality of rank and duration of 
service, the American officer will take command. 
. . . The troops of the King will yield the right 
side to the allies ; French troops will add black to 
their cockades, black being the color of the United 
States," and some such hats, with black and 
white cockades, are still preserved at Fraunces' 
Tavern,^ New York. "The intention of his 
Majesty," the general continues, "is that there 
be perfect concert and harmony between the gen- 
erals and officers of the two nations. The severest 
discipline will be observed. ... It is forbidden 
to take a bit of wood, a sheaf of straw, any kind 
of vegetables, except amicably and in paying. . . . 
All faults of unruliness, disobedience, insubordina- 
tion, ill-will, brutal and sonorous drunkenness 
. . . will be punished, according to ordinances 
with strokes of the flat of the sword." Even 
"light faults of lack of cleanliness or attention" 
will be punished. "To make the punishment the 

1 So called after its owner, Samuel Fraunces (Francis or Francois), 
from the French West Indies, nicknamed "Black Sam" for the 
color of his skin. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 35 

harder for the French soldier, he will be barred 
from military service during his detention." 

The army, but not the fleet, had been placed 
under the orders of Washington, Temay's in- 
structions specified, however, that while his 
squadron had no other commander than himself, 
it was expected that he would "proffer all assis- 
tance that might facilitate the operations of the 
United States," and that he would allow the use 
of our ships "on every occasion when their help 
might be requested." Good- will was obviously 
the leading sentiment, and the desire of all was 
to give as little trouble and bring as much useful 
help as possible. 



Ill 

On the nth day of July the fleet reached New- 
port, after seventy days at sea, which was longer 
than Columbus had taken on his first voyage, but 
which was nothing extraordinary. Abbe Robin, 
a chaplain of the army, arrived later, after a jour- 
ney of eighty-five days, none the less filled with 
admiration for those "enormous machines with 
which men master the waves''^ — a very mi- 
nute enormity from our modern point of view. 
"There were among the land troops," says Closen, 
"endless shouts of joy" at the prospect of being 
on terra firma again. The troops, owing to their 
having been fed on salt meat and dry vegetables, 
with little water to drink (on board the Comtesse 
de Noailles water had become corrupt; it was 
now and then replaced by wine, "but that heats 
one very much"), had greatly suffered. Scurvy 
had caused its usual ravages; 600 or 700 soldiers 
and 1 ,000 sailors were suffering from it ; some had 
died. 

They were now confronted by the unknown. 
What would that unknown be ? Rochambeau 

^ Nouveau Voyage dans I'Amerique Seplentrionale en I'annee 178 1 
et campagne de I'armee de M. le comte de Rochambeau, Philadelphia, 
1782. 

36 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 37 

had only his first division with him; would he be 
attacked at once by the English, who disposed of 
superior naval and land forces about New York ? 
And what would be the attitude of the Americans 
themselves ? Everybody was for them in France, 
but few people had a real knowledge of them. 
Lafayette had, but he was young and enthusi- 
astic. Would the inhabitants, would their leader, 
Washington, would their army answer his descrip- 
tion? On the arrival of the fleet Newport had 
fired "thirteen grand rockets" and illuminated its 
windows, but that might be a mere matter of 
course: of these illuminations the then president 
of Yale, Ezra Stiles, has left a noteworthy record : 
"The bell rang at Newport till after midnight, 
and the evening of the 12th Newport illuminated; 
the Whigs put thirteen lights in the windows, the 
Tories or doubtfuls four or six. The Quakers 
did not choose their lights should shine before 
men, and their windows were broken."^ 

The game was, moreover, a difficult one, and 
had to be played on an immense chess-board, in- 
cluding North and South — Boston, New York, 
Charleston, and the Chesapeake — including even 
"the Isles," that is, the West Indies; and what 
took place there, which might have so much im- 
portance for continental operations, had constantly 
to be guessed or imagined, for lack of news. 

* Literary Diary, New York, 1901, II, 454. 



38 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Worse than all, the reputation of the French was, 
up to then, in America such as hostile English 
books and caricatures, and inconsiderate French 
ones, had made it. We knew it, and so well, 
too, that the appropriateness of having our troops 
winter in our colonies of the West Indies was, at 
one time, considered. Our minister, Gerard, was 
of that opinion : ' ' The Americans are little accus- 
tomed to live with French people, for whom they 
cannot have as yet a very marked inclination."^ 
"The old-time prejudice kept up by the English," 
wrote Mathieu-Dumas in his Souvenirs, "about 
the French character was so strong that, at the 
beginning of the Revolution, the most ardent 
minds and several among those who most desired 
independence, rejected the idea of an alliance 
with France." "It is difficult to imagine," said 
Abbe Robin, "the idea Americans entertained 
about the French before the war. They consid- 
ered them as groaning under the yoke of despot- 
ism, a prey to superstition and prejudices, almost 
idolatrous in their religion, ^ and as a kind of light, 

^To Rochambeau; n. d., but 1780. (Rochambeau papers.) 
2 Writing to the president of Yale, July 29, 1778, Silas Deane, 
just about to return to France, recommended the creation of a chair 
of French: "This language is not only spoke in all the courts, but 
daily becomes more and more universal among people of business 
as well as men of letters, in all the principal towns and cities of 
Europe." Ezra Stiles consulted a number of friends; the majority 

were against or in doubt, "Mr. C violently against, because 

of popery." Literary Diary, August 24, 1778, New York, 1901, II, 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 39 

brittle, queer-shapen mechanisms, only busy friz- 
zling their hair and painting their faces, without 
faith or morals." How would thousands of such 
mechanisms be received ? 

With his usual clear-headedness, Rochambeau 
did the necessary thing on each point. To begin 
with, in case of an English attack, which was at 
first expected every day, he lost no time in forti- 
fying the position he occupied, "having," wrote 
Mathieu-Dumas, "personally selected the chief 
points to be defended, and having batteries of 
heavy artillery and mortars erected along the chan- 
nel, with furnaces to heat the balls." During "the 
first six days," says Closen, "we were not quite 
at our ease, but, luckily, Messieurs les Anglais 
showed us great consideration, and we suffered 
from nothing worse than grave anxieties." After 
the second week, Rochambeau could write home 
that, if Clinton appeared, he would be well re- 
ceived. Shortly after, he feels sorry the visit is 
delayed; later, when his own second division, so 
ardently desired, did not appear, he writes to the 
war minister : "In two words, sir Henry Clinton 
and I are very punctilious, and the question is 
between us who will first call on the other. If 
we do not get up earlier in the morning than the 
English and the reinforcements they expect from 

297. See also, concerning the prevalent impressions about the 
French the Memoir es du Comte de More, 1898, p. 69. 



40 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Europe reach them before our second division ar- 
rives, they will pay us a visit here that I should 
prefer to pay them in New York." 

Concerning the reputation of the French, Ro- 
chambeau and his officers were in perfect accord: 
it would change if exemplary discipline were main- 
tained throughout the campaign. There is noth- 
ing the chief paid more attention to than this, 
nor with more complete success. Writing to 
Prince de Montbarey a month after the landing, 
Rochambeau says: "I can answer for the dis- 
cipline of the army; not a man has left his camp, 
not a cabbage has been stolen, not a complaint 
has been heard." ^ To the President of Congress 
he had written a few days before: "I hope that 
account will have been rendered to your Excel- 
lency of the discipline observed by the French 
troops; there has not been one complaint; not a 
man has missed a roll-call. We are your brothers 
and we shall act as such with you; we shall fight 
your enemies by your side as if we were one and 
the same nation." ^ Mentioning in his memoirs 
the visit of those "savages" who had been for- 
merly under French rule and persisted in remaining 
friendly to us, he adds : ' ' The sight of guns, troops, 
and military exercises caused them no surprise; 
but they were greatly astonished to see apple- 

^ August 8, 1 780. (Rochambeau papers.) 
* August 3, 1780. (Ibid.) 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 41 

trees with their apples upon them overhanging 
the soldiers' tents." "This result," he concludes, 
"was due not only to the zeal of officers, but more 
than anything else to the good disposition of the 
soldiers, which never failed." 

Another fact which proved to our advantage 
was that the French could then be seen in num- 
bers and at close quarters. The difference be- 
tween the portrait and the original was too glaring 
to escape notice. William Channing, father of 
the philanthropist, confides to the same Ezra 
Stiles, in a letter of August 6, 1780, his delighted 
surprise : "The French are a fine body of men, and 
appear to be well officered. Neither the officers 
nor men are the effeminate beings we were here- 
tofore taught to believe them. They are as large 
and likely men as can be produced by any na- 
tion."^ So much for the brittle, queer-shaped 
mechanisms. 

With the French officers in the West Indies, 
most of them former companions in arms and 
personal friends, Rochambeau, as soon as he had 
landed, began to correspond. The letters thus 
exchanged, generally unpublished, give a vivid 
picture of the life then led in the Isles. Cut off 
from the world most of the time, not knowing 
what was taking place in France, in America, on 
the sea, or even sometimes on the neighboring 

* Stiles's Literary Diary, II, 458. 



42 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

island, unaware of the whereabouts of Rodney, 
having to guess which place he might try to storm 
and which they should therefore garrison, these 
men, suffering from fevers, having now and then 
their ships scattered by cyclones, played to their 
credit and with perfect good humor their difficult 
game of hide and seek.^ They send their letters 
in duplicate and triplicate, by chance boats, give 
news of the French court when they have any, 
and learn after a year's delay that their letters 
of October, 1780, have been duly received by Ro- 
chambeau in June, 1 7 8 1 . The Marquis de Bouille, 
who was to cover himself with glory at Brimstone 
Hill, and is now chiefly remembered for the part 
he played in Louis XVI's flight to Varennes, 
writes most affectionately, and does not forget to 
convey the compliments of his brave wife, who 
had accompanied him to Martinique. The Mar- 



• Rodney "has left here two months ago without our being able to 
guess whither he was going. . . . Maybe you know better than I do 
where he may presently be. . . . 

"We have just suffered from a terrible tornado, which has been 
felt in all the Windward Islands; it has caused cruel havoc. A 
convoy of fifty-two sails, arrived the day before in the roadstead of 
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, has been driven out to sea, and has disap- 
peared for now a fortnight; five ships only returned here, the others 
may have reached San Domingo or must have perished. An English 
ship of the line of 44 guns, the Endymion, and two frigates, the 
Laurel and the Andromeda, of the same nationality, have perished 
on our coasts; we have saved some of their sailors." Marquis de 
Bouille to Rochambeau, Fort Royal (Fort de France), October 27, 
1780. (Rochambeau papers.) 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 43 

quis de Saint-Simon^ writes from Santo Domingo 
to say how much he woiild like to go and fight 
under Rochambeau on the continent: "I would 
be delighted to be under your orders, and to give 
up for that the command in chief I enjoy here." 
And he supplies him, in the same unpublished 
letter, with a most interesting account of Cuba, 
just visited by him: "This colony has an air of 
importance far superior to any of ours, inhabited 
as it is by all the owners of the land, so that the 
city (Havana) looks rather a European than a 
colonial one; society is numerous and seems opu- 
lent. If Spain would extend and facilitate the 
trade of Cuba the island would become exceed- 
ingly rich in little time. But prohibitory laws are 
so harsh and penalties so rigorous that they cramp 
industry everywhere." 

A postscript in the same letter shows better 
than anything else what was the common feeling 
among officers toward Rochambeau: "Mont- 
brun," writes Saint-Simon, "who has been suffer- 
ing from the fever for a long time, asks me to as- 
sure you of his respectful attachment, and says 
that he has written you twice, that your silence 

* Three Saint-Simons took part in the American War of Indepen- 
dence, all relatives of the famous duke, the author of the memoirs: 
the Marquis Claude Anne (i 740-1819), the Baron Claude (retired, 
1806), and the Count Claude Henri (i 760-1825), then a very young 
officer, the future founder of the Saint-Simonian sect, and first 
philosophical master of Auguste Comte. 



44 ROCHAIVIBEAU IN AMERICA 

afflicts him very much, and that a token of friend- 
ship and remembrance from you would be for him 
the best of febrifuges. All your former subor- 
dinates of Auvergne think the same, and have 
the same attachment for you, in which respect I 
yield to none."^ 

The stanch devotion of Rochambeau to his 
duties as a soldier, his personal disinterestedness, 
his cool-headedness and energy as a leader, his 
good humor in the midst of troubles had secured 
for him the devotion of many, while his brusquery, 
his peremptoriness, the severity which veiled his 
real warmth of heart whenever the service was at 
stake, won him a goodly number of enemies, the 
latter very generally of less worth as men than 
the former. In the affectionate letter by which 
he made up early differences with "his son La- 
fayette," shortly after his arrival, he observes, 
concerning his own military career: "If I have 
been lucky enough to preserve, up to now, the 
confidence of the French soldiers . . . the reason 
is that out of 15,000 men or thereabout, who have 
been killed or wounded under my orders, of dif- 
ferent rank and in the most deadly actions, I 
have not to reproach myself with having caused 
a single one to be killed for the sake of my own 
fame." He seemed, Segur said in his memoirs, 
"to have been purposely created to understand 

^January 7, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.) 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 45 

Washington, and be understood by him, and to 
serve with republicans. A friend of order, of 
laws, and of liberty, his example more even than 
his authority obliged us scrupulously to respect 
the rights, properties, and customs of our allies." 



IV 

Nothing without my second division, Rocham- 
beau thought. He had urged the government in 
his last letters before leaving France to send it 
not later than a fortnight after he himself had 
sailed: "The convoy will cross much more safely 
now under the guard of two warships," he had 
written to Montbarey, "than it will in a month 
with an escort of thirty, when the English are 
ready." And again, after having embarked on 
the Due de Bourgogne: "For Heaven's sake, sir, 
hasten that second division. . . . We are just 
now weighing anchor." But weeks and months 
went by, and no news came of the second division. 
Washington with his ardent patriotism, Lafay- 
ette with his youthful enthusiasm, were pressing 
Rochambeau to risk all, in order to capture New 
York, the stronghold of the enemy and chief 
centre of their power. "I am confident," Ro- 
chambeau answered, "that our general (Wash- 
ington) does not want us to give here a second 
edition of Savannah," and he felt the more anx- 
ious that, with the coming of recruits and going of 
veterans, and the short-term enlistments, "Wash- 
ington would command now 15,000 men, now 
5,000." 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 47 

Rochambeau decided in October to send to 
France his son, then colonel of the regiment of 
Bourbonnais, to remonstrate. As capture was 
possible and the envoy might have to throw his 
despatches overboard, young Rochambeau, be- 
ing blessed with youth and a good memory, had 
learned their contents by heart. One of the best 
sailors of the fleet had been selected to convey him, 
on the frigate Amazone. On account of superior 
forces mounting guard outside, the captain waited 
for the first night storm that should arise, when 
the watch was sure to be less strict, started in the 
midst of one, after having waited for eight days, 
was recognized, but too late, was chased, had his 
masts broken, repaired them, and reached Brest 
safely. The sailor who did so well on this oc- 
casion, and who was to meet a tragical death 
at Vanikoro. bore the name, famous since, of La 
Perouse. 

Time wore on, a sad time for the American 
cause. One day the news was that one of the 
most trusted generals, famous for his services on 
land and water, Benedict Arnold, had turned 
traitor; another day that Gates had been routed 
at Camden and Kalb killed. In December Ter- 
nay died. In January, worse than all, the sol- 
diers of the Pennsylvania line mutinied; unpaid, 
underfed, kept under the flag long after the time 
for which they had enlisted, "they went," Closen 



48 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

writes in his journal, "to extremities. In Europe 
they would not have waited so long." 

There was no doubt, in fact, that the life they 
had to lead did not closely resemble that which, 
in accordance with the uses then prevailing in 
every country, the posters urging enlistment de- 
picted to them. One such poster, preserved in 
Philadelphia, announces "to all brave, healthy, 
able-bodied, and well-disposed young men in this 
neighborhood who have any inclination to join the 
troops now raising, under General Washington, 
for the defense of the liberties and independence 
of the United States," a "truly liberal and gener- 
ous [encouragement], namely, a bounty of twelve 
dollars, an annual and fully sufficient supply of 
good and handsome clothing, a daily allowance 
of a large and ample ration of provisions, together 
with sixty dollars a year in gold and silver money 
on account of pay." The appeal vaunted, by 
way of conclusion, "the great advantages which 
these brave men will have who shall embrace this 
opportunity of spending a few happy years in 
viewing the different parts of this beautiful con- 
tinent, in the honorable and truly respectable 
character of a soldier, after which he may, if he 
pleases, return home to his friends with his pockets 
full of money and his head covered with laurels. 
God save the United States !" Pretty engravings 
showed handsome soldiers, elegantly dressed, prac- 
tising an easy kind of military drill. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 49 

The danger was great, but brief; tempted by 
the enemy to change sides and receive full pay, 
the Pennsylvania line refused indignantly. "We 
are honest soldiers, asking justice from our com- 
patriots," they answered, "we are not traitors." 
On the margin of a French account of those events, 
published in Paris in 1787, Clinton scribbled a 
number of observations hitherto unprinted.^ They 
are in French, or something like it. Opposite this 
statement the British general wrote: ''Est bien 
dit et c'est dommage qu'il n'est pas vraiy We can- 
not tell, but one thing is sure, namely, that in 
accordance with those words, spoken or not, the 
rebellious soldiers acted. Owing to Washington's 
influence, order soon reigned again, but the alarm 
had been very great, as shown by the instruc- 
tions which he handed to Colonel Laurens, now 
sent by him to Versailles with a mission similar 
to that of young Rochambeau. The emotion 
caused by the last events is reflected in them: 
"The patience of the American army is almost 
exhausted. . . . The great majority of the in- 
habitants is still firmly attached to the cause of 
independence," but that cause may be wrecked 
if more money, more men, and more ships are 
not immediately supplied by the French ally. ^ 

While the presence of the American and French 

' Histoire des Troubles de I'Amdrique Anglaise, by Soulfis; Clinton's 
copy, in the Library of Congress, p. 360. 
' January 15, 1781. 



50 BOCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

troops in the North kept Clinton and his power- 
ful New York garrison immobile where they were, 
the situation in the South was becoming worse 
and worse, with Cornwallis at the head of supe- 
rior forces, Lord Rawdon holding Charleston, and 
the hated Arnold ravaging Virginia. 

Against them the American forces under Greene, 
Lafayette, and Morgan (who had partly de- 
stroyed Tarleton's cavalry at Cowpens, January 
17) were doing their utmost, facing fearful odds. 
With a handful of men, knowing that the slightest 
error might be his destruction, young Lafayette, 
aged twenty-four, far from help and advice, was 
conducting a campaign in which his pluck, wisdom, 
and tenacity won him the admiration of veterans. 
Irritated ever to find him on his path, Cornwallis 
was writing a little later to Clinton: "If I can 
get an opportunity to strike a blow at him with- 
out loss of time, I will certainly try it." But La- 
fayette would not let his adversary thus employ 
his leisure. 

To arrest the progress of Arnold two French 
expeditions were sent, taking advantage of mo- 
ments when access to the sea was not blocked by 
the English fleet before Newport, one in Feb- 
ruary, under Tilly, who pursued Arnold's convoy 
up the Elizabeth River as high as the draft of 
his ships permitted, but had to stop and come 
home, having only captured the Romulus, of 44 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 51 

guns, some smaller ships, a quantity of supplies 
destined for Arnold, and made 550 prisoners; an- 
other of more importance under the Chevalier Des- 
touches, in March, with part of Rochambeau's 
army on board, in case a landing were possible. 
In spite of all precautions, Destouches's intentions 
were discovered; the English fleet engaged ours; 
the fight, in which 72 French lost their lives and 
112 were wounded, was a creditable one and 
might easily have ended in disaster, for the enemy 
had more guns, and several of our ships, on ac- 
count of their not being copper-lined, were slow; 
but clever manoeuvring, however, compensated 
those defects. Congress voted thanks, but the 
situation remained the same. ' ' And now, ' ' Closen 
noted down in his journal, "we have Arnold free 
to act as he pleases, Virginia desolated by his in- 
cursions, and M. de Lafayette too weak to do 
anything but keep on the defensive." 



V 

One day, however, something would have to be 
done, and, in order to be ready, Rochambeau kept 
his army busy with manoeuvres, military exer- 
cises, sham warfare ("le simulacre de la petite 
guerre"), and the building of fortifications. As 
for his officers, he encouraged them to travel, for 
a large part of the land was free of enemies, and 
to become better acquainted with these "Ameri- 
can brothers," whom they had come to fight for. 
French officers were thus seen at Boston, Albany, 
West Point, Philadelphia. It was at this period 
that Chastellux went about the country with 
some of his companions, and gathered the material 
for his well-known Voyages dans I'Amerique du 
Nord, the first edition of which, in a much abbre- 
viated form, was issued by that printing-press of 
the fleet which Rochambeau had recommended to 
himself not to forget: "De I'lmprimerie Royale 
de I'Escadre," one reads on the title-page. Only 
twenty- three copies were struck off; the "Im- 
primerie Royale" of the fleet had obviously no 
superabundance of type nor of paper. 

Closen, who, to his joy and surprise, had been 
made a member of Rochambeau's "family," that 
is, had been appointed one of his aides, as soon 

52 



ROCHAIVIBEAU IN AMERICA 53 

as his new duties left him some leisure, began, 
with his methodical mind, to study, he tells us, 
"the Constitution of the thirteen States and of 
the Congress of America," meaning, of course, at 
that date, their several constitutions, which or- 
ganization, "as time has shown, is well adapted 
to the national character and has made the hap- 
piness of that people so respectable from every 
point of view." He began after this to examine 
the products of the soil of Rhode Island, "per- 
haps one of the prettiest islands on the globe." 

The stay being prolonged, the officers began to 
make acquaintances, to learn English, to gain 
access to American society. It was at first very 
difficult ; neither French nor American understood 
each other's language; so recourse was bravely 
had to Latin, better known then than to-day. 
"Quid de meo, mi carissime Drowne, cogitas si- 
lentio f" A long letter follows, in affectionate 
terms addressed to Doctor Drowne, a Newport 
physician, and signed: "Silly, officier au regiment 
de Bourbonnois," September 9, 1780. Sublieuten- 
ant de Silly announced, however, his intention to 
learn English dining the winter season : ' ' Inglicam 
linguam noscere conabor." His letters of an after- 
date are, in fact, written in English, but a be- 
ginner's English.^ 

* Specimens exhibited by the doctor's descendant in the Fraunces's 
Tavern Museum. 



54 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

For the use of Latin the commander-in-chief of 
the French army was able to set the example, and 
Ezra Stiles could talk at a dinner in that language 
with Rochambeau, still reminiscent of what he 
had learned when studying for priesthood. The 
president of Yale notes in his journal: 

"5 [October, 1780]. Introduced to the com- 
mander-in-chief of the French allied army, the 
Count de Rochambeau. . . . 

"7. Dined at the General de Rochambeau's, 
in a splendid manner. There were, perhaps, thirty 
at table. I conversed with the general in Latin. 
He speaks it tolerably." 

Beginning to know something of the language, 
our officers risk paying visits and go to teas and 
dinners. Closen notes with curiosity all he sees: 
"It is good behavior each time people meet to 
accost each other, mutually offering the hand and 
shaking it, English fashion. Arriving in a com- 
pany of men, one thus goes around, but must re- 
member that it belongs to the one of higher rank 
to extend his hand first." 

Unspeakable quantities of tea are drunk. ' ' To 
crave mercy, when one has taken half a dozen 
cups, one must put the spoon across the cup; for 
so long as you do not place it so, your cup is al- 
ways taken, rinsed, filled again, and placed be- 
fore you. After the first, the custom is for the 
pretty pourer {verseuse) — most of them are so — 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 55 

to ask you: Is the tea suitable?"^ — "An insipid 
drink," grumbles Chaplain Robin, over whom the 
prettiness of the pourers was poweriess. 

The toasts are also a very surprising custom, 
sometimes an uncomfortable one. "One is ter- 
ribly fatigued by the quantity of healths which are 
being driink (toasts). From one end of the table 
to the other a gentleman pledges you, sometimes 
with only a glance, which means that you should 
drink a glass of wine with him, a compliment 
which cannot be politely ignored." 

In the course of an excursion to Boston the 
young captain visits an assembly of Quakers, 
"where, unluckily, no one was inspired, and ennui 
seemed consequently to reign." 

But what strikes him more than anything else 
is the beauty of those young ladies who made him 
drink so much tea: "Nature has endowed the 
ladies of Rhode Island with the handsomest, finest 
featiires one can imagine; their complexion is 
clear and white; their hands and feet usually 
small." But let not the ladies of other States 
be tempted to resent this preference. One sees 
later that in each city he visits young Closen is 
similarly struck, and that, more considerate than 
the shepherd Paris, he somehow manages to re- 
fuse the apple to none. On the Boston ladies he 
is quite enthusiastic, on the Philadelphia ones not 

' In English in the original. 



56 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

less ; he finds, however, the latter a little too 
serious, which he attributes to the presence of 
Congress in that city. 

But, above all, the object of my compatriots' 
curiosity was the great man, the one of whom 
they had heard so much on the other side, the 
personification of the new-bom ideas of liberty 
and popular government, George Washington. 
All wanted to see him, and as soon as permission 
to travel was granted several managed to reach 
his camp. For all of them, different as they might 
be in rank and character, the impression was the 
same and fulfilled expectation, beginning with 
Rochambeau, who saw him for the first time at the 
Hartford conferences, in September, 1780, when 
they tried to draw a first plan for a combined 
action. A friendship then commenced between 
the two that was long to survive those eventful 
years. "From the moment we began to corre- 
spond with one another," Rochambeau wrote in 
his memoirs, "I never ceased to enjoy the sound- 
ness of his judgment and the amenity of his style 
in a very long correspondence, which is likely 
not to end before the death of one of us." 

Chastellux, who saw him at his camp, where the 
band of the American army played for him the 
"March of the Huron," could draw from life his 
well-known description of him, ending: "North- 
em America, from Boston to Charleston, is a 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 57 

great book every page of which tells his praise."^ 
Count de Segur says that he apprehended his ex- 
pectations could not be equalled by reality, but 
they were. "His exterior almost told his story. 
Simplicity, grandeur, dignity, calm, kindness, 
firmness shone in his physiognomy as well as in 
his character. He was of a noble and high sta- 
ture, his expression was gentle and kindly, his 
smile pleasing, his manners simple without famili- 
arity. . . . All in him annoimced the hero of a 
republic." "I have seen Washington," says Abbe 
Robin, "the soul and support of one of the great- 
est revolutions that ever happened, ... In a 
country where every individual has a part in su- 
preme authority ... he has been able to main- 
tain his troops in absolute subordination, render 
them jealous of his praise, make them fear his 
very silence." Closen was one day sent with de- 
spatches to the great man and, like all the others, 
began to worship him. 

As a consequence of this mission Washington 
came, on the 6th of March, 1781, to visit the 
French camp and fleet. He was received with 
the honors due to a marshal of France, the ships 
were dressed, the troops, in their best uniforms, 
"dans la plus grande tenue," lined the streets from 

^ Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chaslellux dans VAmeriqtie Septen- 
trionale, dans les annees 1780, lySi et 1782, Paris, 1786, 2 vols., I, 
118. 



58 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Rochambeau's house (the fine Vernon house, still 
in existence^) to the harbor; the roar and smoke 
of the guns rose in honor of the "hero of Hberty." 
Washington saw Destouches's fleet sail for its 
Southern expedition and wished it Godspeed; 
and after a six days' stay, enlivened by "illumina- 
tions, dinners, and balls," he left on the 13th. 
"I can say," we read in Closen's journal, "that 
he carried away with him the regrets, the at- 
tachment, the respect, and the veneration of all 
our army." Summing up his impression, he adds: 
"All in him betokens a great man with an excel- 
lent heart. Enough good will never be said of 
him." 

^ Now the property of the Charity Organization Society. See A 
History of the Vernon Hoiise, by Maud Lyman Stevens, Newport, 
R. I., 1915. Illustrated. 



VI 



On the 8th of May, 1781, the Concorde arrived 
at Boston, having on board Count de Barras, "a 
commodore with the red ribbon," of the same 
family as the future member of the "Directoire," 
and who was to replace Ternay. With him was 
Viscount Rochambeau, bringing to his father the 
unwelcome news that no second division was to 
be expected. "My son has retiuned very soli- 
tary," was the only remonstrance the general sent 
to the minister. But the young colonel was able 
to give, at the same time, news of great impor- 
tance. A new fleet under Count de Grasse had 
been got together, and at the time of the Con- 
corde's departure had just sailed for the West 
Indies, so that a temporary domination of the 
sea might become a possibility. "Nothing with- 
out naval supremacy," Rochambeau had written, 
as we know, in his note-book before starting. 

In spite, moreover, of "hard times," wrote 
Vergennes to La Luzerne, and of the already dis- 
quieting state of our finances, a new "gratuitous 
subsidy of six million livres toiu-nois" was granted 
to the Americans. Some funds had already been 
sent to Rochambeau, one million and a half in 

59 



60 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

February, with a letter of Necker saying: "Be 
assured, sir, that all that will be asked from the 
Finance Department for your army will be made 
ready on the instant." Seven millions arrived a 
little later, brought by the Astree, which had 
crossed the ocean in sixty-seven days, without 
mishap. As for troops, only 600 recruits arrived 
at Boston, in June, with the Sagittaire. 

Since nothing more was to be expected, the 
hour had come for definitive decisions. A great 
effort must now be made, the great effort in view 
of which all the rest had been done, the one which 
might bring about peace and American liberty 
or end in lasting failure. All felt the importance 
and solemnity of the hour. The great question 
was what should be attempted — the storming of 
New York or the relief of the South ? 

The terms of the problem had been amply dis- 
cussed in letters and conferences between the 
chiefs, and the discussion still continued. The 
one who first made up his mind and ceased to 
hesitate between the respective advantages or 
disadvantages of the two projects, and who plainly 
declared that there was but one good plan, which 
was to reconquer the South, that one, strange to 
say, was neither Washington nor Rochambeau, 
and was not in the United States either as a 
sailor or a soldier, but as a diplomat, and in draw- 
ing attention to the fact I am only performing 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 61 

the most agreeable duty toward a justly admired 
predecessor. This wise adviser was La Luzerne. 
In an unpublished memoir, drawn up by him on 
the 2oth of April and sent to Rochambeau on 
May 19 with an explanatory letter in which he 
asked that his statement (a copy of which he also 
sent to B arras) be placed under the eyes of Wash- 
ington, he insisted on the necessity of immediate 
action, and action in the Chesapeake: "It is in 
the Chesapeake Bay that it seems urgent to con- 
vey all the naval forces of the King, with such 
land forces as the generals will consider appro- 
priate. This change cannot fail to have the most 
advantageous consequences for the continuation 
of the campaign," which consequences he points 
out with singular clear-sightedness, adding: "If 
the English follow us and can reach the bay only 
after us, their situation will prove very different 
from ours; all the coasts and the inland parts of 
the coiuitry are full of their enemies. They have 
neither the means nor the time to raise, as at 
New York, the necessary works to protect them- 
selves against the inroads of the American troops 
and to save themselves from the danger to which 
the arrival of superior forces would expose them." 
If the plan submitted by him offers difficulties, 
others should be formed, but he maintains that 
"all those which have for their object the relief 
of the Southern States must be preferred, and that 



62 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

no time should be lost to put them in execu- 
tion." 

At the Weathersfield conference, near Hart- 
ford, Conn., between the Americans and French, 
on the 23d of May (in the Webb house, still in 
existence), Washington still evinced, and not 
without some weighty reasons, his preference for 
an attack on New York, He spoke of the ad- 
vanced season, of "the great waste of men which 
we have foimd from experience in long marches 
in the Southern States," of the "difficulty of 
transports by land"; all those reasons and some 
others, ' ' too well known to Count de Rochambeau 
to need repeating, show that an operation against 
New York should be preferred, in the present cir- 
cumstances, to the effort of a sending of troops 
to the South." On the same day he was writing 
to La Luzerne: "I should be wanting in respect 
and confidence were I not to add that our object 
is New York." 

La Luzerne, however, kept on insisting. To 
Rochambeau he wrote on the ist of June: "The 
situation of the Southern States becomes every 
moment more critical; it has even become very 
dangerous, and every measure that could be taken 
for their relief would be of infinite advantage, 
. . . The situation of the Marquis de Lafayette 
and that of General Greene is most embarrassing, 
since Lord Cornwallis has joined the English divi- 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 63 

sion of the Chesapeake. If Virginia is not helped 
in time, the EngHsh will have reached the goal 
which they have assigned to themselves in the 
bold movements attempted by them in the South : 
they will soon have really conquered the Southern 
States. ... I am going to write to M. de Grasse 
as you want me to do; on your side, seize every 
occasion to write to him, and multiply the copies 
of the letters you send him," that is, in duplicate 
and triplicate, for fear of loss or capture. "His 
coming to the rescue of the oppressed States is 
not simply desirable; the thing seems to be now 
of the most pressing necessity." He must not 
only come, but bring with him all he can find of 
French troops in our isles: thus would be com- 
pensated, to a certain extent, the absence of the 
second division. 

Rochambeau soon agreed, and, with his usual 
wisdom, Washington was not long in doing the 
same. On the 28th of May the French general 
had already written to de Grasse, beseeching him 
to come with every means at his disposal, to bring 
his whole fleet, and not only his fleet, but a sup- 
ply of money, to be borrowed in our colonies, 
and also all the French land forces from our gar- 
risons which he could muster. The desire of Saint- 
Simon to come and help had, of course, not been 
forgotten by Rochambeau, and he counted on 
his good- will. After having described the ex- 



64 ROCHAIVIBEAU IN AMERICA 

treme importance of the effort to be attempted, 
he concluded : ' ' The crisis through which America 
is passing at this moment is of the severest. The 
coming of Count de Grasse may be salvation." 

Events had so shaped themselves that the fate 
of the United States and the destinies of more 
than one nation would be, for a few weeks, in the 
hands of one man, and one greatly hampered by 
imperative instructions obliging him, at a time 
when there was no steam to command the wind 
and waves, to be at a fixed date in the West 
Indies, owing to certain arrangements with Spain. 
Would he take the risk, and what would be the 
answer of that temporary arbiter of future events, 
Francois Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse, a sailor 
from the age of twelve, now a lieutenant-gen- 
eral and "chef d'escadre," who had seen already 
much service on every sea, in the East and West 
Indies, with d'Orvilliers at Ushant, with Guichen 
against Rodney in the Caribbean Sea, a haughty 
man, it was said, with some friends and many 
enemies, the one quality of his acknowledged by 
friend and foe being valor? "Our admiral," his 
sailors were wont to say, "is six foot tall on ordi- 
nary days, and six foot six on battle days." 

What would he do and say? People in those 
times had to take their chance and act in accor- 
dance with probabilities. This Washington and 
Rochambeau did. By the beginning of June all 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 65 

was astir in the northern camp. Soldiers did not 
know what was contemplated, but obviously it 
was something great. Young officers exulted. 
What joy to have at last the prospect of an 
"active campaign," wrote Closen in his journal, 
' ' and to have an occasion to visit other provinces 
and see the differences in manners, customs, prod- 
ucts, and trade of our good Americans!" 

The camp is raised and the armies are on the 
move toward New York and the South; they are 
in the best dispositions, ready, according to cir- 
cumstances, to fight or admire all that turns up. 
"The country between Providence and Bristol," 
says Closen, "is charming. We thought we had 
been transported into Paradise, all the roads being 
lined with acacias in full bloom, filling the air with 
a delicious, almost too strong fragrance." Steeples 
are climbed, and "the sight is one of the finest 
possible." Snakes are somewhat troublesome, but 
such things will happen, even in Paradise. The 
heat becomes very great, and night marches are 
arranged, beginning at two o'clock in the morn- 
ing; roads at times become muddy paths, where 
wagons, artillery, carts conveying boats for the 
crossing of rivers cause great trouble and delay. 
Poor Abbe Robin, ill-prepared for martyrdom, 
becomes pathetic, talking of his own fate, fearful 
of being captured by the English and of becoming 
' ' the victim of those anti-republicans . " He sleeps 



66 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

on the ground, iinder a torrential rain, "in front 
of a great fire, roasted on one side, drenched on the 
other." He finds, however, that "French gayety 
remains ever present in these hard marches. 
The Americans whom curiosity brings by the 
thousand to our camps are received," he writes, 

with Hvely joy ; we cause our military instruments 
to play for them, of which they are passionately 
fond. Officers and soldiers, then, American men 
and women mix and dance together; it is the 
Feast of Equality, the first-fruits of the alliance 
which must prevail between those nations. . . . 
These people are still in the happy period when 
distinctions of rank and birth are ignored; they 
treat alike the soldier and the officer, and often 
ask the latter what is his profession in his country, 
unable as they are to imagine that that of a war- 
rior may be a fixed and permanent one." 

Washington writes to recommend precautions 
against spies, who will be sent to the French 
camp, dressed as peasants, bringing fruit and 
other provisions, and who "will be attentive to 
every word which they may hear drop."^ 

Several officers, for the sake of example, dis- 
card their horses and walk, indifferent to mud 
and heat; some of them, like the Viscount de 
Noailles, performing on foot the whole distance 
of seven hundred and fifty-six miles between 

^To Rochambeau, June 30, 1781. 



EOCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 67 

Newport and Yorktown. Cases of sickness were 
rare. "The attention of the superior officers," 
says Abbe Robin, "very much contributed to 
this, by the care they took in obHging the soldiers 
to drink no water without rum in it to remove 
its noisome quaHties." It is not reported that 
superior officers had to use violence to be obeyed. 
This precaution, up to a recent date, was still 
considered a wise one; in the long journeys on 
foot that we used to take in my youth across the 
Alps, our tutor was convinced that no water mi- 
crobe could resist the addition of a little kirsch. 
Anyway, we resisted the microbes. 

On the 6th of July the junction of the two 
armies took place at Phillipsburg, "three leagues," 
Rochambeau writes, "from Kingsbridge, the first 
post of the enemy in the island of New York,"^ 
the American army having followed the left bank 
of the Hudson in order to reach the place of 
meeting. On the receipt of the news, Lord Ger- 
main, the British colonial secretary, wrote to 
Clinton, who commanded in chief at New York: 
"The junction of the French troops with the 

^ This island's aspect fifteen years later is thus described by Duke 
de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "Enfin nous sommes arrives a 
King's Bridge dans I'ile de New York, oii le terrain, generalement 
mauvais, est encore en mauvais bois dans les parties les plus eloignees 
de la ville, at oil il est cependant convert de fermes et surtout de 
maisons de campagne dans les six ou sept milles qui s'en approchent 
davantage et dans les parties qui avoisinent la riviere du Nord et le 
bras de mer qui separe cette ile de Long Island." Voyage, V, 300. 



68 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Americans will, I am persuaded, soon produce 
disagreements and discontents, and Mr. Wash- 
ington will find it necessary to separate them very 
speedily, either by detaching the Americans to 
the southward or suffering the French to return 
to Rhode Island. . . . But I trust, before that 
can happen, Lord Comwallis will have given the 
loyal inhabitants on both sides of the Chesapeake 
the opportunity they have so long ago earnestly 
desired of avowing their principles and standing 
forth in support of the King's measures." Similar 
proofs of my lord's acumen abound in his partly 
unpublished correspondence. He goes on rejoicing 
and deducting all the happy consequences which 
were sure to result from the meeting of the French 
and American troops, so blandly elated at the 
prospect as to remind any one familiar with La 
Fontaine's fables, of Perrette and her milk-pot. 

Washington, in the meantime, was reviewing 
the French troops (July 9), and Rochambeau 
the American ones, and — a fact which would 
have greatly surprised Lord Germain — the worse 
equipped the latter were, the greater the sym- 
pathy and admiration among the French for 
their endurance. "Those brave people," wrote 
Closen, "it really pained us to see, almost naked, 
with mere linen vests and trousers, most of them 
without stockings; but, would you believe it? 
looking very healthy and in the best of spirits." 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 69 

And further on : "I am full of admiration for the 
American troops. It is unbelievable that troops 
composed of men of all ages, even of children of 
fifteen, of blacks and whites, all nearly naked, 
without money, poorly fed, should walk so well 
and stand the enemy's fire with such firmness. 
The calmness of mind and the clever combina- 
tions of General Washington, in whom I discover 
every day new eminent qualities, are already 
enough known, and the whole universe respects 
and admires him. Certain it is that he is admi- 
rable at the head of his army, every member of 
which considers him as his friend and father." 
These sentiments, which were unanimous in the 
French army, assuredly did not betoken the 
clash counted upon by the English colonial secre- 
tary, and more than one of our officers who had, a 
few years later, to take part in another Revolu- 
tion must have been reminded of the Continental 
soldiers of '8i as they led to battle, fighting for a 
similar cause, our volunteers of '92. 

No real hatred, any more than before, appeared 
among the French troops for those enemies whom 
they were now nearing, and with whom they had 
already had some sanguinary skirmishes. Dur- 
ing the intervals between military operations re- 
lations were courteous, and at times amicable. 
The English gave to the French news of Europe, 
even when the news was good for the latter, and 



70 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

passed to them newspapers. "We learned that 
news" (Necker's resignation), writes Blanchard, 
"through the EngUsh, who often sent trumpeters 
and passed gazettes to us. We learned from the 
same papers that Mr. de La Motte-Picquet had 
captured a rich convoy.^ These exchanges be- 
tween the English and us did not please the 
Americans, nor even General Washington, who 
were unaccustomed to this kind of warfare." 
The fight was really for an idea, but, what might 
have dispelled any misgivings, with no possibility 
of a change of idea. 

1 The convoy was carrying to England the enormous booty taken 
by Rodney at St. Eustatius. Eighteen of its ships were captured by 
La Motte-Picquet (May 2, 1781) and thus reached France instead of 
England. 

Toward the Hessians, however, the feeling was dififerent. Some 
had deserted to enlist in Lauzun's legion, but they almost immediately 
counterdeserted, upon which Rochambeau wrote to Lauzun: "You 
have done the best in deciding never to pester yourself again with 
Hessian deserters, of whom, you know, I never had a good opinion." 
Newport, December 22, 1780. 



VII 

Two unknown factors now were for the gen- 
erals the cause of deep concern. What would de 
Grasse do ? What would Clinton do ? The 
wounded officer of Johannisberg, the winner of 
Charleston, Sir Henry Clinton, a lieutenant- 
general and former member of Parliament, en- 
joying great repute, was holding New York, not 
yet the second city of the world nor even the 
first of the United States, covering only with its 
modest houses, churches, and gardens the lower 
part of Manhattan, and reduced, owing to the 
war, to 10,000 inhabitants. But, posted there, 
the English commander threatened the road on 
which the combined armies had to move. He 
had at his disposal immense stores, strong forti- 
fications, a powerful fleet to second his move- 
ments, and troops equal in ntimber and training 
to ours. 

There are periods in the history of nations 
when, after a continuous series of misfortunes, 
when despair would have seemed excusable, sud- 
denly the sky clears and everything turns their 
way. In the War of American Independence, 
such a period had begun. The armies of Wash- 
ington and Rochambeau, encumbered with their 

71 



72 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

carts, wagons, and artillery, had to pass rivers, 
to cross hilly regions, to follow muddy tracks; 
any serious attempt against them might have 
proved fatal, but nothing was tried. It was of 
the greatest importance that Clinton should, as 
long as possible, have no intimation of the real 
plans of the Franco-Americans ; everything helped 
to mislead him: his natural dispositions as well 
as circumstances. He had an unshakable con- 
viction that the key to the whole situation was 
New York, and that the royal power in America, 
and he, too, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clin- 
ton, would stand or fall with that city. Hence 
his disinclination to leave it and to attempt any- 
thing outside. His instructions ordered him to 
help Cornwallis to his utmost, the plan of the 
British court being to conquer the Southern 
States first and then continue the conquest north- 
ward. But he, on the contrary, was day after 
day asking Cornwallis to send back some of his 
troops. And while, as he never ceased to point 
out afterward, he was careful to add, "if you 
could spare them," he also remarked in the same 
letter : "I confess I could not conceive you would 
require above 4,000 in a station where General 
Arnold has represented to me, upon report of 
Colonel Simcoe, that 2,000 men would be amply 
sufficient."^ 

1 July 8, 1 781. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 73 

A great source of light, and, as it turned out, of 
darkness also, was the intercepting of letters. 
This constantly happened in those days, to the 
benefit or bewilderment of both parties, on land 
or at sea. But luck had decidedly turned, and 
the stars shone propitious for the allies. We cap- 
tured valuable letters, and Clinton misleading 
ones. It was something of a retribution after he 
had so often used or tried to use such captures to 
his advantage, as when, having seized an intimate 
letter of Washington, a passage of which might 
have given umbrage to Rochambeau, he had it 
printed in the newspapers. But the two com- 
manders were not to be ruffled so easily, and all 
that took place was a frank explanation. Spon- 
taneously acting in the same spirit, La Luzerne 
had written to Rochambeau concerning Wash- 
ington and this incident: "I have told all those 
that have spoken to me of it that I saw nothing 
in it but the zeal of a good patriot, and a citizen 
must be very virtuous for his enemies not to find 
other crimes to reproach him with."^ 

More treasures had now fallen into the hands 
of Clinton: a letter of Chastellux to La Luzerne, 
speaking very superciliously of his unmanageable 
chief, Rochambeau, and of his "bourrasques." 
In it he congratulated himself, as Rochambeau 
narrates, on having "cleverly managed to cause 

'April 13, 1 781. (Rochambeau papers.) 



74 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

me to agree with General Washington," the re- 
sult being that ' ' a siege of the island of New York 
had at last been determined upon. . . . He 
added complaints about the small chance a man 
of parts had to influence the imperiousness of a 
general always wanting to command." Clinton 
caused that letter to be sent to Rochambeau, "ob- 
viously with no view," writes the latter, "to the 
preservation of peace in my military family." 
Rochambeau showed it to Chastellux, who blush- 
ingly acknowledged its authorship; the general 
thereupon threw it into the fire and left the un- 
fortunate Academician "a prey to his remorse," 
— and to his ignorance, for he was carefiil not to 
undeceive him as to the real plans of the com- 
bined army. 

A text of the conclusions reached at the Weath- 
ersfield conferences was no less happily captured 
by Clinton, and we have seen how clearly Wash- 
ington had there expressed his reluctance to at- 
tempt striking the chief blow in the South. 
A letter of Barras to La Luzerne, of May 27, 
was also intercepted, and as luck would have it, 
the sailor declared in it his intention to take the 
fleet, of all places, to Boston (a real project, but 
abandoned as soon as formed and replaced by 
another which took him to the Chesapeake). A 
most important letter of Rochambeau to La 
Luzerne, explaining the real plan, was thereupon 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 75 

intercepted; it was in cipher and the EngHsh 
managed to decipher it. But, as the stars shone 
propitious to the alHes, it was only the EngHsh 
in London, and not those in New York, who could 
do it, and when the translation reached Clinton 
at last, he had no longer, for good causes, any 
doubt as to the real aims of Washington and 
Rochambeau. 

The colonial secretary was, in the meantime, 
kept in a state of jubilation by so much treasiu-e- 
trove and the news forwarded by Clinton, to 
whom he wrote: "The copies of the very impor- 
tant correspondence which so fortunately fell into 
your hands, inclosed in your despatch, show the 
rebel affairs to be almost desperate, and that noth- 
ing but the success of some extraordinary enter- 
prise can give vigor and activity to their cause, 
and I confess I am well pleased that they have 
fixed upon New York as the object to be at- 
tempted."^ Clinton acknowledged a little later to 
Lord Germain the receipt of a "reinforcement of 
about 2,400 German troops and recruits," which 
he was careful to hold tight in New York till the 
end. 

The combined armies had, in the meantime, 
done their best to confirm the English commander 
in such happy dispositions. They had built in 
the vicinity of New York brick ovens for baking 

ijuly 14, 1781. 



76 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

bread for an army, as in view of a long siege. 
There had been reconnaissances, marches, and 
countermarches, a sending of ships toward Long 
Island without entering, however, "dans la baie 
d' Oyster," skirmishes which looked like prelimi- 
naries to more important operations, and in one 
of which, together with the two Berthiers and 
Count de Vauban, Closen nearly lost his life in 
order to save his hat. A camp proverb about 
hats had been the cause of his taking the risk. 
When he returned, "kind Washington," he writes 
in his journal, "tapped me on the shoulder, say- 
ing: 'Dear Baron, this French proverb is not yet 
known among our army, but your cold behavior 
during danger will be it' " (in English in the orig- 
inal as being the very words of the great man to 
the young one, though cold does probably duty 
for cool, and the final it is certainly not Washing- 
ton's). 

Then on the sudden, on the i8th of August, 
the two armies raised their camps, disappeared, 
and, following unusual roads, moving northward 
at first for three marches, reached in the midst 
of great difficulties, under a torrid heat, greatly 
encumbered with heavy baggage, the Hudson 
River and crossed it at King's Ferry, without 
being more interfered with than before. How 
can such an inaction on the part of Clinton be ex- 
plained ? "It is for me," writes Count Guillaume 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 77 

de Deux-Ponts in his journal, the manuscript of 
which was found on the quays in Paris/ and printed 
in America, "an imdecipherable enigma, and I 
hope I shall never be reproached for having puz- 
zled people with any similar ones." 

The river once crossed, the double army moved 
southward by forced marches. Rochambeau, in 
order to hasten the move, prescribed the leaving 
behind of a quantity of effects, and this, says 
Closen, "caused considerable grumbling among 
the line," which grumbled but marched. The 
news, to be sure, of so important a movement 
came to Clinton, but, since the stars had ceased to 
smile on him, he chose to conclude, as he wrote 
to Lord Germain on the 7th of September, "this 
to be a feint." When he discovered that it was 
not "a feint," the Franco- American army was 
beyond reach. "What can be said as to this?" 
Closen writes merrily. "Try to see better another 
time," and he draws a pair of spectacles on the 
margin of his journal. 

The march southward thus continued unham- 
pered. They crossed first the Jerseys, "a land of 
Cockayne, for game, fish, vegetables, poultry." 
Closen had the happiness to "hear from the lips 
of General Washington, and on the ground itself, a 

* In June, 1867, by S. A. Green, who printed it with an English 
translation: My Campaigns in America, a journal kept by Count 
William de Deux-Ponts, Boston, 1868. 



78 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

description of the dispositions taken, the move- 
ments and all the incidents of the famous battles 
of Trenton and Princeton." The young man, who 
had made great progress in English, was now used 
by the two generals as their interpreter ; so nothing 
escaped him. The reception at Philadelphia was 
triumphal; Congress was most courteous; toasts 
were innumerable. The city is an immense one, 
"with seventy-two streets in a straight line. . . . 
Shops abound in all kinds of merchandise, and 
some of them do not yield to the Petit Dunkerque 
in Paris." Where is now the Petit Dunkerque? 
— "Mais ou sont les Neiges d'antan?"^ Women 
are very pretty, "of charming manners, and very 
well dressed, even in French fashion." Benezet, 
the French Quaker, one of the celebrities of the 
city, is found to be full of wisdom, and La Luzerne, 
"who keeps a state worthy of his sovereign," 
gives a dinner to one hundred and eighty guests. 
From Philadelphia to Chester, on the 5 th of 
September, Rochambeau and his aides took a 
boat. As they were nearing the latter city, "we 
saw in the distance," says Closen, "General Wash- 
ington shaking his hat and a white handkerchief, 

^The house at the entrance of the Pont-Neuf, where the Petit 
Dunkerque was established, being then the most famous "magasin 
de frivolites" in existence, survived until July, 1914. The sign of the 
shop, a little ship with the inscription, "Au Petit Dunkerque," was 
still there. It has been preserved and is now in the Carnavalet 
Museum. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AlVIERICA 79 

and showing signs of great joy." Rochambeau 
had scarcely landed when Washington, usually 
so cool and composed, fell into his arms; the 
great news had arrived; de Grasse had come, and 
while Comwallis was on the defensive at York- 
town the French fleet was barring the Chesa- 
peake.^ 

On the receipt of letters from Washington, Ro- 
chambeau, and La Luzerne telling him to what 
extent the fate of the United States was in his 
hands, the sailor, having "learned, with much 
sorrow," he wrote to the latter, "what was the 
distress of the continent, and the need there was 
of immediate help," had decided that he would 
leave nothing undone to usefully take part in the 
supreme effort which, without his help, might be 
attempted in vain. Having left, on the 5th of 
August, Cap Frangais (to-day Cap Haitien), he 
had added to his fleet all the available ships he 
could find in our isles, including some which, hav- 
ing been years away, had received orders to go 
back to France for repairs. He had had great diffi- 

^ Washington's joy was in proportion to the acuteness of his 
anxieties; only three days before he was writing to Lafayette: 
"But, my dear marquis, I am distressed beyond expression to know 
what has become of Count de Grasse, and for fear that the English 
fleet, by occupying the Chesapeake, toward which, my last accounts 
say, they were steering, may frustrate all our prospects in that quar- 
ter. . . . Adieu, my dear marquis; if you get anything new from 
any quarter, send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost 
all impatience and anxiety." Philadelphia, September 2, 1781. 



80 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

culty in obtaining the money asked for, although 
he had offered to mortgage for it his castle of 
Tilly, and the Chevalier de Charitte, in command 
of the Bourgogne, had made a like offer. But at 
last, thanks to the Spanish governor at Havana, 
he had secured the desired amount of twelve hun- 
dred thousand francs. He was bringing, more- 
over, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, with the 3,000 
regular troops under his command. De Grasse's 
only request was that operations be pushed on 
with the utmost rapidity, as he was bound to be 
back at the Isles at a fixed date. It can truly be 
said that no single man risked nor did more for 
the United States than de Grasse, the single one 
of the leaders to whom no memorial has been 
dedicated. 

The news spread like wild-fire; the camp was 
merry with songs and shouts ; in Philadelphia the 
joy was indescribable; crowds pressed before the 
house of La Luzerne, cheering him and his coun- 
try, while in the streets impromptu orators, stand- 
ing on chairs, delivered mock funeral orations on 
the Earl of Comwallis. "You have," Rocham- 
beau wrote to the admiral, "spread universal joy 
throughout America, with which she is wild."^ 

Anxiety was renewed, however, when it was 
learned shortly after that the French m.en-of-war 
had left the Chesapeake, the entrance to which 

' September 7, 1781. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 81 

now remained free. The English fleet, of twenty- 
ships and seven frigates, under Hood and Graves, 
the same Graves who had failed to intercept Ro- 
chambeau's convoy, had been signalled on the 
5th of September, and de Grasse, leaving behind 
him, in order to go faster, some of his ships and a 
number of sailors who were busy on land, had 
weighed anchor, three-quarters of an hour after 
sighting the signals, to risk the fight upon which 
the issue of the campaign and, as it turned out, 
of the war, was to depend. "This behavior of 
Count de Grasse," wrote the famous Tarleton, 
is "worthy of admiration." Six days later the 
French admiral was back; he had had 21 officers 
and 200 sailors killed or wounded, but he had 
lost no ship, and the enemy's fleet, very much 
damaged, with 336 men killed or disabled, and 
having lost the Terrible, of 74 guns, and the 
frigates Iris and Richmond of 40,^ had been 
compelled to retreat to New York. Admiral 
Robert Digby thereupon arrived with naval re- 

* Graves had rightly supposed that, to have been able to start so 
quickly, de Grasse must have caused some of his ships to cut their 
anchors' cables, marking the spot with buoys. The two frigates 
had been sent to gather those buoys, and were bringing several as a 
prize to the English admiral, when they were captured. {Journal Par- 
ticiilier, by Count de Revel, sublieutenant in the regiment of "Mon- 
sieur-Infanterie," p. 131.) On the 15th of September Washington 
wrote to de Grasse: "I am at a loss to express the pleasure which 
I have in congratulating your Excellency ... on the glory of hav- 
ing driven the British fleet from the coast and taking two of their 
frigates." 



82 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

inf orcements ; "yet I do not think," La Luzerne 
wrote to Rochambeau, "that battle will be offered 
again. If it is, I am not anxious about the re- 
sult." Nothing was attempted. This "superi- 
ority at sea," Tarleton wrote in his History of the 
Campaigns, "proved the strength of the enemies 
of Great Britain, deranged the plans of her gen- 
erals, disheartened the courage of her friends, and 
finally confirmed the independency of America."^ 
"Nothing," Rochambeau had written in his note- 
book at starting, "without naval supremacy." 

On re-entering the bay de Grasse had the plea- 
sure to find there another French fleet, that of his 
friend Barras. As a lieutenant-general de Grasse 
outranked him, but as a "chef d'escadre" Barras 
was his senior officer, which might have caused 
difficulties; the latter could be tempted, and he 
was, to conduct a campaign apart, so as to per- 
sonally reap the glory of possible successes. "I 
leave it to thee, my dear Barras," de Grasse had 
written him on the 28th of July, "to come and 
join me or to act on thy own account for the good 
of the common cause. Do only let me know, so 
that we do not hamper each other unawares." 
Barras preferred the service of the cause to his 
own interest; leaving Newport, going far out on 

* History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1787, by Lieutenant-Colonel 
Tarleton, commandant of the late British Legion, Dublin, 1787, 
pp. 403 ff. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 83 

the high seas, then dashing south at a great dis- 
tance from the coast, he escaped the Enghsh and 
reached the Chesapeake, bringing the heavy siege 
artillery now indispensable for the last operations. 
The stars had continued incredibly propitious. 

The well-known double siege now began, that 
of Yorktown^ by Washington and Rochambeau, 
and that of Gloucester, on the opposite side of 
the river, which might have afforded a place of 
retreat to Cornwallis. De Grasse had consented 
to land, in view of the latter, 800 men under Choisy, 
whom Lauzun joined with his legion, and both 
acted in conjunction with the American militia 
under Weedon.^ The two chiefs on the Yorktown 
side were careful to conduct the operations ac- 
cording to rules, "on account," says Closen, "of 
the reputation of Cornwallis, and the strength of 
the garrison." Such rules were certainly familiar 
to Rochambeau, whose fifteenth siege this one was. 

From day to day Cornwallis was more narrowly 
pressed. As late as the 29th of September he 
was still full of hope. "I have ventured these 

' A minute "Journal of the Siege" was kept by Mr. de Menonville, 
aide major-general, a translation of which is in the Magazine of 
American History, 1881, VII, 283. 

^ The city of Gloucester consisted of "four houses on a promontory 
facing York," but very well defended by trenches, ditches, redoubts, 
manned by a garrison of 1,200 men. (Count de Revel, Journal 
Particulier, p. 171.) A detailed account of the Gloucester siege is 
in this journal. Choisy "had previously won a kind of fame by his 
defense of the citadel of Cracow, in Poland." {Ibid., p. 139.) 



84 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

two days," he wrote to Clinton, "to look General 
Washington's whole force in the face in the posi- 
tion on the outside of my works; and I have the 
pleasure to assure your Excellency that there was 
but one wish throughout the whole army, which 
was that the enemy would advance." A dozen 
days later the tone was very different. "I have 
only to repeat that nothing but a direct move to 
York River, which includes a successful naval 
action, can save me . . . many of our works are 
considerably damaged . ' ' 

Lord Germain was, in the meantime, writing to 
Clinton in his happiest mood, on the 12 th of 
October: "It is a great satisfaction to me to find 
. . . that the plan you had concerted for conduct- 
ing the military operations in that quarter (the 
Chesapeake) corresponds with what I had sug- 
gested." The court, which had no more misgiv- 
ings than Lord Germain himself, had^ caused to 
sail with Digby no less a personage than Prince 
William, one of the fifteen children of George III, 
and > eventually one of his successors as William IV; 
but his presence could only prove one more en- 
cumbrance. 

After the familiar incidents of the siege in which 
the American and French armies displayed similar 
valor and met with about the same losses, the de- 
cisive move of the night attack on the enemy's 
advanced redoubts had to be made, one of the 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 85 

redoubts to be stormed by the Americans with 
Lafayette, and the other by the French under 
Viomesnil. Rochambeau addressed himself es- 
pecially to the grenadiers of the regiment of 
Gatinais, which had been formed with a portion 
of his old regiment of Auvergne, and said: "My 
boys, if I need you to-night, I hope you will not 
have forgotten that we have served together in 
that brave regiment of Auvergne sans tache (spot- 
less Auvergne), an honorable surname deserved 
by it since its formation." They answered that 
if he would promise to have their former name 
restored to them he would find they were ready 
to die to the last. They kept their word, losing 
many of their number, and one of the first requests 
of Rochambeau when he reached Paris was that 
their old name be given back to them, which was 
done. Gatinais thus became Royal Auvergne, 
and is now the i8th Infantry. 

On the 19th of October, after a loss of less than 
300 men in each of the besieging armies, an act 
was signed as great in its consequences as any 
that ever followed the bloodiest battles, the capit- 
ulation of Yorktown. It was in a way the rati- 
fication of that other act which had been pro- 
posed for signature five years before at Phila- 
delphia by men whose fate had more than once, 
in the interval, seemed desperate, the Declaration 
of Independence. 



86 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

On the same day Closen writes: "The York 
garrison marched past at two o'clock, before the 
combined army, which was formed in two Hnes, 
the French facing the Americans and in full dress 
uniform. . . . Passing between the two armies, 
the English showed much disdain for the Ameri- 
cans, who so far as dress and appearances went rep- 
resented the seamy side, many of those poor boys 
being garbed in linen habits-vestes, torn, soiled, a 
number among them almost shoeless. The Eng- 
lish had given them the nickname of Yanckey- 
Dudle. What does it matter ? the man of sense 
will think; they are the more to be praised and 
show the greater valor, fighting, as they do, so 
badly equipped." As a "man of sense," Rocham- 
beau writes in his memoirs: "This justice must 
be rendered to the Americans that they behaved 
with a zeal, a courage, an emulation which left 
them in no case behind, in all that part of the siege 
intrusted to them, in spite of their being unaccus- 
tomed to sieges." 

The city offered a pitiful sight. "I shall never 
forget," says Closen, "how horrible and painfull 
to behold was the aspect of the town of York. 
. . . One could not walk three steps without 
finding big holes made by bombs, cannon-balls, 
splinters, barely covered graves, arms and legs 
of blacks and whites scattered here and there, 
most of the houses riddled with shot and devoid 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 87 

of window panes. . . . We found Lord Corn- 
wallis in his house. His attitude evinced the no- 
bility of his soul, his magnanimity and firmness of 
character. He seemed to say: I have nothing to 
reproach myself with, I have done my duty and 
defended myself to the utmost." This impression 
of Lord Comwallis was general. 

As to Closen's description of the town, now so 
quiet and almost asleep, by the blue water, amid 
her sand-dunes, once more torn and blood-stained 
during the Civil War, resting at the foot of the 
great marble memorial raised a hundred years 
later by Congress,^ it is confirmed by Abbe Robin, 
who notices, too, "the quantity of human limbs 
which infected the air," but also, being an abbe, 
the niimber of books scattered among the ruins, 
many being works of piety and theological con- 
troversy, and with them ' ' the works of the famous 
Pope, and translations of Montaigne's Essays, of 

1 As early as 1796, when La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt visited it, 
the city, formerly a prosperous one, had become a borough of 800 
inhabitants, two-thirds of which were colored. "The inhabitants," 
says the traveller, "are without occupation. Some retail spirits or 
cloth; some are called lawyers, some justices of the peace. Most 
of them have, at a short distance from the town, a small farm, which 
they go and visit every morning, but that scarcely fills the mind or 
time; and the inhabitants of York, who live on very good terms 
with each other, occupy both better in dining together, drinking 
punch, playing billiards; to introduce more variety in this mo- 
notonous kind of life, they often change the place where they meet. 
. . . The name of Marshal de Rochambeau is still held there in 
great veneration." Voyage dans les Etals-Unis, Paris, "An VII," 
vol. VI, p. 283. 



88 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Gil Bias, and of the Essay on Women by Monsieur 
Thomas," that stem essay, so popular then in 
America, in which society ladies were invited to 
fill their soul with those "sentiments of nature 
which are born in retreat and grow in silence." 

Nothing better puts in its true light the domi- 
nant characteristic of the French sentiment 
throughout the war than what happened on this 
solemn occasion, and more shows how, with their 
new-bom enthusiasm for philanthropy and liberty, 
the French were pro-Americans much more than 
anti-English. No trace of a triumphant attitude 
toward a vanquished enemy appeared in anything 
they did or said. Even in the surrendering, the 
fact remained apparent that this was not a war 
of hatred. "The English," writes Abbe Robin, 
"laid down their arms at the place selected. 
Care was taken not to admit sightseers, so as to 
diminish their humiliation." Henry Lee (Light- 
horse Harry), who was present, describes in the 
same spirit the march past: "Universal silence 
was observed amidst the vast concourse, and the 
utmost decency prevailed, exhibiting in demeanor 
an awful sense of the vicissitudes of human life, 
mingled with commiseration for the unhappy. ' ' ^ 

^ Memoirs of the War in tJie Southerft Department of the United States, 
Philadelphia, 1812, II, 343. In the same spirit Pontgibaud notes 
that the British army laid down its arms "to the noble confusion 
of its brave and unfortunate soldiers." Memoires du Comte de More 
(Pontgibaud), 1898, p. 104. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 89 

The victors pitied Comwallis and showed him 
every consideration; Rochambeau, learning that 
he was without money, lent him all he wanted. 
He invited him to dine with him and his officers 
on the 2d of November. "Lord Comwallis," 
writes Closen, "especially distinguished himself 
by his reflective turn of mind, his noble and 
gentle manners. He spoke freely of his cam- 
paigns in the Carolinas, and, though he had won 
several victories, he acknowledged, nevertheless, 
that they were the cause of the present misfor- 
tunes. All, with the exception of Tarleton, spoke 
French, O'Hara in particular to perfection, but 
he seemed to us something of a brag. ' ' ^ A friendly 
correspondence began between the English gen- 
eral and some of the French officers. Viscount de 
Noailles, the one who had walked all the way, 
lending him, the week after the capitulation, his 
copy of the beforementioned famous work of 
Count de Guibert on Tactics, which was at that 
time the talk of Europe, and of which Napoleon 

' Same good feeling on the Gloucester side. After the surrender, " les 
officiers anglais vinrent voir nos officiers qui etaient de service, leur 
firent toutes les honnetetes possible, et burent aieur sante." (Revel, 
Journal Particulier, p. 168.) The British fleet appeared only on the 
27th of October, at the entrance of the capes; thirty-one sails were 
counted on that day and forty-four on the next; after the 29th they 
were no longer seen. "Nous avons su depuis," Revel writes, "que 
I'Amiral Graves avait dans son armee le general Clinton, avec des 
troupes venues de New York pour secourir lord Comwallis. Mais 
il etait trop tard; la poule etait mangee, et I'un et I'autre prirent le 
parti de s'en retourner." {Ibid., p. 178.) 



90 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

said later that "it was such as to form great men," 
the same Guibert who expected lasting repute 
from that work and from his military services, 
and who — irony of fate — general and Academician 
though he was, is chiefly remembered as the hero 
of the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. 

Comwallis realized quite well that the French 
had fought for a cause dear to their hearts more 
than from any desire to humble him or his nation. 
He publicly rendered full justice to the enemy, 
acknowledging that the fairest treatment had 
been awarded him by them. In the final report 
in which he gives his own account of the catas- 
trophe, and which he caused to be printed when 
he reached England, he said: "The kindness and 
attention that has been shown us by the French 
officers . . . their delicate sensibility of our situa- 
tion, their generous and pressing offers of money, 
both public and private, to any amount, has really 
gone beyond what I can possibly describe and 
will, I hope, make an impression on the breast of 
every British officer whenever the fortunes of war 
should put any of them in our power." 

The French attitude in the New World was in 
perfect accord with the French sentiments in the 
Old. On receiving from Lauzun and Count de 
Deux-Ponts, who for fear of capture had sailed 
in two different frigates, the news of the taking 
of Comwallis, of his 8,000 men (of whom 2,000 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 91 

were in hospitals), 800 sailors, 214 guns, and 22 
flags, the King wrote to Rochambeau : ' ' Monsieur 
le Comte de Rochambeau, the success of my arms 
flatters me only as being conducive to peace." 
And, thanking the "Author of all prosperity," he 
announced the sending of letters to the arch- 
bishops and bishops of his kingdom for a Te Deum 
to be sung in all the churches of their dioceses. 

It was a long time since the old cocks of the 
French churches had quivered at the points of the 
steeples to the chant of a Te Deum for a victory 
leading to a glorious peace. The victory was 
over those enemies who, not so very long before, 
had bereft us of Canada. Nothing more signifi- 
cant than the pastoral letter of "Louis Apolli- 
naire de la Tour du Pin Montauban, by the grace 
of God first Bishop of Nancy, Primate of Lor- 
raine," appointing the date for the thanksgiving 
ceremonies, and adding: "This so important ad- 
vantage has been the result of the wisest measures. 
Reason and himianity have gauged it and have 
placed it far above those memorable but bloody 
victories whose lustre has been tarnished by al- 
most universal mourning. Here the blood of our 
allies and of our generous compatriots has been 
spared, and why should we not note with satis- 
faction that the forces of our enemies have been 
considerably weakened, their efforts baffled, the 
fruits of their immense expense lost, without our 



92 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

having caused rivers of their blood to be spilt, 
without our having filled their country with un- 
fortunate widows and mothers?" For this, too, 
as well as for the victory, thanks must be offered; 
and for this, too, for such a rare and such a hu- 
mane feeling, the name of Bishop de la Tour du 
Pin Montauban deserves to be remembered. 

The nation at large felt like the bishop. One 
of the most typical of the publications inspired 
in France by the war and its outcome was the 
Fragment of Xenophon, newly found in the ruins 
of Palmyra . . . translated from the Greek, anony- 
mously printed, in 1 783 ,Mn which under the names 
of Greeks and Carthaginians, the story of the 
campaign is told; the chief actors being easily 
recognized, most of them, under anagrams : Tusin- 
gonas is Washington; Cherambos, Rochambeau; 
the illustrious Filaatete, Lafayette; Tangides, 
d'Estaing, and the wise Thales of Milet, Franklin. 

Critical minds, the author observes, will per- 
haps think they discover anachronisms, but such 
mean nothing; he will soon give an edition of 
the Greek original, splendidly printed, "so the 
wealthy amateurs will buy it, without being able 
to read it; the learned, who could read it, will be 
unable to buy it, and everybody will be pleased." 

^The work of Gabriel Brizard, a popular writer in his day: Frag- 
ment de Xenophon, nouvcllement trouvi dans les mines de Palmyre par 
tin Anglois et depose ati Museum Britannicum — Traduil du Grec par 
un Frangois, Paris, 1783. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 93 

The author gives a detailed description of the 
Greeks and of the Carthaginians, that is, the 
French and their former enemies, the EngHsh: 
* ' Greece, owing to her intellectual and artistic 
predominance, seemed to lead the rest of the 
world, and Athens led Greece. The Athenians 
were, truth to say, accused of inconstancy; they 
were reproached for the mobility of their character, 
their fondness for new things, their leaning toward 
raillery; but there was something pleasing in 
their defects. Justice was, moreover, rendered to 
their rare qualities: gentle as they were and soft- 
ened by their fondness for enjoyment, they none- 
theless were attracted by danger and prodigal of 
their blood. They felt as much passion for glory 
as for pleasure; arbiters in matters of taste, they 
played the same role in questions of honor, an 
idol with them; somewhat light-minded, they were 
withal frank and generous. . . . This brilliant 
and famous nation was such that those among her 
enemies that cast most reproaches at her envied 
the fate of the citizens living within her borders." 

Whether succeeding events have cured or not 
some of that light-mindedness, any one can see 
to-day and form his judgment. 

As to Carthaginians (the English), no ani- 
mosity, no hatred, but, on the contrary, greater 
praise than was accorded to his own com- 
patriots by many an English writer: "It must 



94 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

be acknowledged that they never made a finer 
defense. . . . They faced everywhere all their 
enemies, and, disastrous as the result may have 
proved for them, this part of their annals will 
remain one of the most glorious. Why should 
we hesitate to render them justice ? Yes, if the 
intrepid defender of the columns of Hercules^ were 
present in person at our celebration, he would 
receive the tribute of praise and applause that 
Greeks know how to pay to any brave and gen- 
erous enemy." 

This way of thinking had nothing exceptional. 
One of the most authoritative publicists of the 
day, Lacretelle, in 1785, considering, in the Mer- 
cure de France, the future of the new-bom United 
States, praised the favorable influence exercised 
on them by the so much admired British Constitu- 
tion — "the most wonderful government in Europe. 
For it will be England's glory to have created 
peoples worthy of throwing off her yoke, even 
though she must endure the reproach of having 
forced them to independence by forgetfulness of 
her own maxims." 

As to the members of the French army who 
had started for the new crusade two years before, 
they had at once the conviction that, in accor- 

^ General Eliott, later Lord Heathfield, defender of Gibraltar, well 
known in France not only as an enemy, but as a former pupil of the 
military school at La Fere. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 95 

dance with their anticipation, they had witnessed 
something great which would leave a profotmd 
trace in the history of the world. They brought 
home the seed of liberty and equality, the "virus," 
as it was called by Pontgibaud, who, friend as 
he was of Lafayette, resisted the current to 
the last and remained a royalist. "The young 
French nobility," says Talleyrand in his memoirs, 
"having enlisted for the cause of independence, 
clung ever after to the principle which it had 
gone to defend."^ Youthfiil Saint-Simon, the 
future Saint-Simonian, thus summed up his im- 
pressions of the campaign: "I felt that the 
American Revolution marked the beginning of a 



* Mathieu-Diunas availed himself of his stay in Boston before 
sailing to go and visit, with some of his brother officers, several of 
the heroes of independence — Hancock, John Adams, Doctor Cooper: 
"We listened with avidity to the latter, who, while applauding our 
enthusiasm for liberty, said to us: 'Take care, take care, young men, 
that the triumph of the cause on this virgin soil does not influence 
overmuch your hopes; you will carry away with you the germ of 
these generous sentiments, but if you attempt to fecund them on 
your native soil, after so many centuries of corruption, you will 
have to surmount many more obstacles; it cost us much blood to 
conquer liberty; but you will shed torrents before you establish it 
in your old Europe.' How often since, during our political turmoils, 
in the coiurse of our bad days, did I not recall to mind the prophetic 
leave-taking of Doctor Cooper. But the inestimable prize which 
the Americans secured in exchange for their sacrifices was never absent 
from my thought." (Souvenirs du Lietilenant-General Comte Mathieu- 
Dunias, publies par son fits, I, io8.) The writer notices the early 
formation of a "national character, in spite of the similitude of lan- 
guage, customs, manners, religion, principles of government with the 
English." (Ibid., 113.) 



96 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

new political era; that this revolution would 
necessarily set moving an important progress in 
general civilization, and that it would, before 
long, occasion great changes in the social order 
then existing in Europe."^ Many experienced 
the feeling described in the last lines of his jour- 
nal by Count Guillatime de Deux-Ponts, wounded 
at the storming of the redoubts: "With troops as 
good and brave and well-disciplined as those 
which I have had the honor to lead against the 
enemy, one can undertake anything. ... I owe 
them the greatest day in my life, the souvenir of 
which will never die out. . . . Man's life is 
mixed with trials, but one can no longer com- 
plain when having enjoyed the delightful moments 
which are their counterpart; a single instant 
effaces such troubles, and that instant, well re- 
sented, causes one to desire new trials so as to 
once more enjoy their recompense." 

^CEuvres, 1865, I, 12. 



VIII 

For one year more Rochambeau remained in 
America. Peace was a possibility, not a certainty. 
In London, where so late as November 20, the 
most encouraging news continued to be received, 
but where that of the catastrophe, brought by 
the Rattlesnake, arrived on the 25th, George III 
and his ministers refused to yield to evidence, Lord 
Germain especially, for whom the shock had been 
great, and who was beseeching Parliament "to 
proceed with vigor in the prosecution of the war 
and not leave it in the power of the French to 
tell the Americans that they had procured their 
independence, and were consequently entitled to 
a preference, if not an exclusive right, in their 
trade." This was not to know us well ; our treaty 
of commerce had been signed three years before, 
at a time when anything would have been granted 
to propitiate France, but there was not in it, as 
we saw, one single advantage that was not equally 
accessible to any one who chose, the English 
included. 

As for King George, he decided that the 8th of 
February, 1782, would be a day of national fast- 
ing, to ask pardon for past sins, and implore 

97 



98 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Heaven's assistance in the prosecution of the 
war. FrankHn was still beseeching his com- 
patriots to be on their guard : "It seems the [Eng- 
lish] nation is sick of [the war] . . . but the King 
is obstinate. . . . The ministry, you will see, 
declare that the war in America is for the futtire 
to be only defensive. 1 hope we shall be too pru- 
dent to have the least dependence on this declara- 
tion. It is only thrown out to lull us; for, de- 
pend upon it, the King hates us cordially, and will 
be content with nothing short of our extirpation." ^ 

With his French admir air ices the sage ex- 
changed merry, picturesque letters. Madame 
Brillon writes, in French, from Nice on the nth 
of December, 1781: "My dear Papa, I am sulky 
with you . . . yes, Mr. Papa, I am sulky. What ! 
You capture whole armies in America, you burgoy- 
nize Comwallis, you capture guns, ships, ammu- 
nition, men, horses, etc., etc., you capture every- 
thing and of everything, and only the gazette 
informs your friends, who go off their heads 
drinking your health, that of Washington, of in- 
dependence, of the King of France, of the Mar- 
quis de Lafayette, of Mr. de Rochambeau, Mr. 
de Chastellux, etc., and you give them no sign of 
life! . . ." 

With his valiant pen, which feared nothing, not 
even French grammar, Franklin answered : ' ' Passy, 

^To Robert Livingston, Passy, March 4, 1782. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 99 

25 Decembre 1781. — Vous me boudes, ma chere 
amie, que je n'avois pas vous envoye tout de suite 
I'histoire de notre grande victoire. Je suis bien 
sensible de la magnitude de notre avantage et de 
ses possibles bonnes consequences, mais je ne 
triomphe pas. S^achant que la guerre est pleine 
de varietes et d'incertitudes, dans la mauvaise 
fortune j'espere la bonne, et dans la bonne je 
Grains la mauvaise." 

The future continued doubtful. In June Wash- 
ington was still writing: "In vain is it to expect 
that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes 
for peace, and equally ungenerous and fruitless 
wiU it be for one State to depend upon another to 
bring this to pass."^ French and American regi- 
ments remained, therefore, under arms and waited, 
but scarcely did anything on the continent but 
wait. For if George III was still for war, the mass 
of his people were not. Rochambeau availed 
himself of his leisure to visit the accessible parts 
of the country, give calls and dinners to his neigh- 
bors, study the manners and resources of the in- 
habitants, go fox-hunting "through the woods, 
accompanied by some twenty sportsmen. We 
have forced more than thirty foxes; the packs of 
hounds of the local gentlemen are perfect," states 
Closen. The different usages of the French and 
the Americans are for each other a cause of merri- 

' To Archibald Gary, June 15, 1782. 



100 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

ment. "On New Year's Day the custom of the 
French to embrace, even in the street, caused much 
American laughter," but, the young aide observes 
with some spite, "their shake hands, on the other 
side, those more or less prolonged and sometimes 
very hard-pressed twitchings of the hands are cer- 
tainly on a par with European embracings." 

Rochambeau had established himself at Wil- 
liamsburg, the quiet and dignified capital of the 
then immense State of Virginia, noted for its 
"Bruton church," its old College of WilHam and 
Mary, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the 
birthplace of the far-famed Phi Beta Kappa fra- 
ternity, its statue of the former English governor. 
Lord Botetourt,^ in conspicuous marble wig and 
court mantle. "America, behold your friend," 
the inscription on the pedestal reads. 

That other friend of America, Rochambeau, 
took up his quarters in the college, one of the 
buildings of which, used as a hospital for our 
troops, accidentally took fire, but was at once paid 
for by the French commander. Seeing more of 
the population, Rochambeau was noting a num- 
ber of traits which were to be taken up again by 
Tocqueville, the diffusion of the ideas of religious 
tolerance, the absence of privileges, equality put 
into practise. "The husbandman in his habita- 
tion is neither a castellated lord nor a tenant, 

' White marble; signed and dated, Richard Hayward, London, 
1773- 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 101 

but a landowner." It takes him thirty to forty 
years to rise from "the house made of logs and 
posts," with the house "of well- joined boards" 
as an intermediary stage, to the "house in bricks, 
which is the acme of their architecture." Labor 
is expensive and is paid a dollar a day. The coun- 
try has three million inhabitants, but will easily 
support a little more than thirty, which was 
not such a bad guess since the thirteen States 
of Rochambeau's day have now thirty-seven. 
Men are fond of English furniture, and women 
"have a great liking for French fashions." In 
every part where the ravages of the war have not 
been felt people live at their ease, "and the little 
negro is ever busy clearing and laying the table." 

Faithful Closen, who had been proposed for pro- 
motion on account of his gallant conduct at the 
siege, accompanied the general everywhere, and 
also explored separately, on his own account, led 
sometimes by his fondness for animals, of which 
he was making "a small collection, some living 
and some stuffed ones, only too glad if they can 
please the persons for whom I destine them." 
He takes notes on raccoons, investigates opossums, 
and visits a marsh "full of subterranean habita- 
tions of beavers," and he sees them at work. He is 
also present at one of those cock-fights so popular 
then in the region, "but the sight is a little too 
cruel to allow one to derive enjoyment from it." 

Sent to Portsmouth with letters for Mr. de 



102 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Vaudreuil, in command of our fleet, Closen be- 
comes acquainted "with a very curious animal 
which the people of the region call a musk-cat, but 
which I believe to be the puanV (the stinking 
one), and a careful description shows that, in any 
case, the name well fitted the animal. He also 
studies groundhogs on the same occasion. The 
charm and picturesqueness of wild life in American 
forests is a trait which French officers noted with 
amused curiosity in their journals. Describing 
his long journey on foot from the Chesapeake, 
where he had been shipwrecked, to Valley Forge, 
where he was to become aide to his Auvergnat 
compatriot, Lafayette, youthful Pontgibaud, with 
no luggage nor money left, sleeping in the open, 
writes of the beauty of birds, and the delightful 
liveliness of innumerable little squirrels, "who 
jimiped from branch to branch, from tree to tree, 
around me. They seemed to accompany the tri- 
umphal march of a young warrior toward glory. 
... It is a fact that, with their jumps, their 
gambols, that quantity of little dancers, so nim- 
ble, so clever, retarded my walk. . . . Such is 
the way with people of eighteen; the present mo- 
ment makes them forget all the rest."^ 

Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of 

* Memoires du Conite de More (formerly Chevalier de Pontgibaud), 
1898, p. 56; first ed., Paris, 1827, one of Balzac's ventures as a 
printer. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 103 

whom was Closen, journey to visit at Monticello 
the already famous Jefferson; they take with 
them fourteen horses, sleep in the houses where 
they chance to be at nightfall, a surprise party 
which may, at times, have caused embarrassment, 
but this accorded with the customs of the day. 
The hospitality is, according to occasions, brilliant 
or wretched, "with a bed for the general, as orna- 
mented as the canopy for a procession," and else- 
where "with rats which come and tickle our ears." 
They reach the handsome house of the "philos- 
opher," adorned with a colonnade, "the platform 
of which is very prettily fitted with all sorts of 
mythological scenes." 

The lord of the place dazzles his visitors by his 
encyclopaedic knowledge. Closen describes him 
as "very learned in belles-lettres, in history, in 
geography, etc., etc., being better versed than any 
in the statistics of America in general, and the 
interests of each particular province, trade, agri- 
culture, soil, products, in a word, all that is of 
greatest use to know. The least detail of the wars 
here since the beginning of the troubles is fa- 
miliar to him. He speaks all the chief languages 
to perfection, and his library is well chosen, and 
even rather large in spite of a visit paid to the 
place by a detachment of Tarleton's legion, which 
has proved costly and has greatly frightened his 
family." 



104 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Niimerous addresses expressing fervent grati- 
tude were received by Rochambeau, from Con- 
gress, from the legislatures of the various States, 
from the universities, from the mayor and inhabi- 
tants of Williamsburg, the latter offering their 
thanks not only for the services rendered by the 
general in his "military capacity," but, they said, 
"for your conduct in the more private walks of 
life, and the happiness we have derived from the 
social, polite, and very friendly intercourse we 
have been honored with by yourself and the officers 
of the French army in general, during the whole 
time of your residence among us." The favor- 
able impression left by an army permeated with 
the growing humanitarian spirit, is especially 
mentioned in several of those addresses: "May 
Heaven," wrote "the Governor, council and rep- 
resentatives of the State of Rhode Island and 
Providence Plantations in General Assembly con- 
vened," "reward your exertions in the cause of 
humanity and the particular regard you have paid 
to the rights of the citizens." 

Writing at the moment when departure was im- 
minent, the Maryland Assembly recalled in its 
address the extraordinary prejudices prevailing 
shortly before in America against all that was 
French: "To preserve in troops far removed from 
their own country the strictest discipline and to 
convert into esteem and affection deep and ancient 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 105 

prejudices was reserved for you. . . . We view 
with regret the departure of troops which have 
so conducted, so endeared, and so distinguished 
themselves, and we pray that the laurels they have 
gathered before Yorktown may never fade, and 
that victory, to whatever quarter of the globe they 
direct their arms, may follow their standard." 

The important result of a change in American 
sentiment toward the French, apart from the 
military service rendered by them, was confirmed 
to Rochambeau by La Luzerne, who wrote him: 
"Your well-behaved and brave army has not only 
contributed to put an end to the success of the 
English in this country, but has destroyed in 
three years prejudices deep-rooted for three cen- 
turies."^ 

The "President and professors of the Univer- 
sity of William and Mary," using a style which 
was to become habitual in France but a few years 
later, desired to address Rochambeau, "not in the 
prostituted language of fashionable flattery, but 
with the voice of truth and republican sincerity," 
and, after thanks for the services rendered and 
the payment made for the building destroyed 
"by an accident that often eludes all possible 
precaution," they adverted to the future intellec- 
tual intercourse between the two nations, saying: 

1 October 8, 1782. This letter, as well as the addresses, in the 
Rochambeau papers. 



106 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

"Among the many substantial advantages which 
this country hath already derived, and which 
must ever continue to flow from its connection 
with France, we are persuaded that the improve- 
ment of useful knowledge will not be the least. 
A niimber of distinguished characters in your 
army afford us the happiest presage that science 
as well as liberty will acquire vigor from the fos- 
tering hand of your nation." 

They concluded : * ' You have reaped the noblest 
laurels that victory can bestow, and it is, perhaps, 
not an inferior triumph to have obtained the sin- 
cere affection of a grateful people." 

In order to "foster," as the authors of the ad- 
dress said, such sentiments as to a possible in- 
tellectual intercourse, the French King sent to 
this university, as the college was then called, 
"two hundred volumes of the greatest and best 
French works," but, La Rochefoucauld adds after 
having seen them in 1796, they arrived greatly 
damaged, "because the Richmond merchant who 
had undertaken to convey them to the college 
forgot them for a pretty long time in his cellar in 
the midst of his oil and sugar barrels." Fire has 
since completed the havoc, so that of the two 
hundred only two are now left, exhibited under 
glass in the library-museum of the college. They 
are parts of the works of Bailly, then of European 
fame as an astronomer and scientist, who was, 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 107 

however, to count in history for something else 
than his Traite sur VAtlantide de Platon, for he 
was the same Bailly who a few years later pre- 
sided over the National Assembly, sending to 
the royal purchaser of his works the famous reply : 
"The nation assembled can receive no orders," 
and who, two days after the fall of the Bastille, 
was acclaimed by the crowd mayor of Paris, 
while Lafayette was acclaimed commander-in- 
chief of the National Guard. 

Another gift of books was sent, with the same 
intent, by the King of France to the University 
of Pennsylvania, and, though many have disap- 
peared, the fate of this collection has been happier. 
A niimber of those volumes are still in use at 
Philadelphia, works which had been selected as 
being likely to prove of greatest advantage, on 
science, surgery, history, voyages, and bearing the 
honored names of Buffon, of Darwin's forerunner, 
Lamarck, of Joinville, Bougainville, the Benedic- 
tins {Art de verifier les Dates), and the same 
Bailly. 

Rochambeau, who had begun learning English, 
set himself the task of translating the addresses 
received by him, and several such versions in his 
handwriting figure among his papers. 

Closen, intrusted with the care of taking to 
Congress the general's answer to its congratula- 
tions, rode at the rate of over one hundred miles 



108 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

a day, slept "a few hours in a bed not meant to 
let any one oversleep himself, thanks either to 
its comfort or to the biting and abundant company 
in it," met by chance at Alexandria "the young, 
charming, and lovely daughter-in-law of General 
Washington," Mrs. Custis, and the praise of her 
is, from now on, ceaseless: "I had alread}' heard 
pompous praise of her, but I confess people had 
not exaggerated. This lady is of such a gay dis- 
position, so prepossessing, with such perfect edu- 
cation, that she cannot fail to please everybody." 
He hands his despatches to Congress, some to 
Washington, returns at the same rate of speed, 
having as guide a weaver, so anxious to be through 
with his job (two couriers had just been killed), 
that he rode at the maddest pace. He reached 
Williamsburg on the nth of May, having covered, 
deduction made of the indispensable stoppings, 
"nine hundred and eighty miles in less than nine 
times twenty-four hours." 

As the summer of 1782 was drawing near, the 
French army, which had wintered in Virginia, 
moved northward in view of possible operations. 
This was for Closen an occasion to visit Mount 
Vernon, where Rochambeau had stopped with 
Washington the year before when on their way 
to Yorktown. "The house," says the aide, "is 
quite vast and perfectly distributed, with hand- 
some furniture, and is admirably kept, without 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 109 

luxury. There are two pavilions connected with 
it, and a number of farm buildings. . . . Behind 
the pavilion on the right is an immense garden, 
with the most exquisite fruit in the country." 

Mrs. Washington gracefully entertains the vis- 
itor, as well as Colonel de Custine, the same who 
was to win and lose battles and die beheaded in 
the French Revolution. Some ten officers of the 
Saintonge regiment, which was in the neighbor- 
hood, are also received. "Mr. de Bellegarde came 
ahead of Mr. de Custine, and brought, on his be- 
half, a porcelain service, from his own manufac- 
ture, at Niderviller, near Phalsbourg, of great 
beauty and in the newest taste, with the arms of 
General Washington, and his monogram sur- 
mounted by a wreath of laurel.^ Mrs. Washing- 
ton was delighted with Mr. de Custine's atten- 
tion, and most gracefully expressed her gratitude." 

All leave that same evening except Closen, who 
had again found there the incomparable Mrs. 
Custis (whose silhouette he took and inserted in 
his journal), and who remained "one day more, 
being treated with the utmost affability by these 
ladies, whose society," he notes, "was most sweet 
and pleasant to me." He leaves at last, "rather 
sad." 

1 A large bowl from the original set is preserved in the National 
Museum (Smithsonian Institution) at Washington. It bears only the 
monogram and not the family arms. The wreath is of roses with a 
foliage which may be laurel. 



110 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Moving northward by night marches, the troops 
again start not later than two o'clock in the 
morning, as in the previous summer; the French 
officers notice the extraordinary progress realized 
since their first visit. At Wilmington, says Closen, 
"some fifty brick houses have been built, very 
fine and large, since we first passed, which gives 
a charming appearance to the main street." At 
Philadelphia La Luzerne is ready with another 
magnificent entertainment; a Dauphin has been 
born to France, and a beautiful hall has been 
built on purpose for the intended banquet by "a 
French officer serving in the American corps of 
Engineers," Major L'Enfant, the future designer 
of the future "federal city." 

On the 14th of August Washington and Ro- 
chambeau were again together, in the vicinity of 
the North River, and the American troops were 
again reviewed by the French general. They are 
no longer in tatters, but well dressed, and have a 
fine appearance; their bearing, their manoeuvres 
are perfect; the commander-in-chief, "who causes 
his drums," Rochambeau relates, "to beat the 
French March," is delighted to show his soldiers 
to advantage; everybody compliments him. 

During his stay at Providence, in the course of 
his journey north, Rochambeau gave numerous 
fetes, a charming picture of which, as well as of 
the American society attending them, is furnished 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 111 

us by Segur: "Mr. de Rochambeau, desirous to 
the very last of proving by the details of his con- 
duct, as well as by the great services he had ren- 
dered, how much he wished to keep the affection 
of the Americans and to carry away their regrets, 
gave in the city of Providence frequent assemblies 
and numerous balls, to which people flocked from 
ten leagues around. 

"I do not remember to have seen gathered to- 
gether in any other spot more gayety and less 
confusion, more pretty women and more happily 
married couples, more grace and less coquetry, a 
more complete mingling of persons of all classes, 
between whom an equal decency allowed no 
untoward difference to be seen. That decency, 
that order, that wise liberty, that felicity of the 
new Republic, so ripe from its very cradle, were 
the continual subject of my surprise and the 
object of my frequent talks with the Chevalier de 
Chastellux."! 

1 Memoires, souvenirs et anecdotes, I, 402. 



IX 

In the autumn of 1782 a general parting took 
place, Rochambeau returning to France^ and the 
army being sent to the Isles, believed now to be 
threatened by the English; for if the war was 
practically at an end for the Americans on the 
continent, it was not yet the same elsewhere for 
us, and Suffren especially was prosecuting in the 
Indies his famous naval campaign, which, owing 
to the lack of means of communication, was to 
be continued long after peace had been signed. 

So many friendships had been formed that there 
was much emotion when the last days arrived.^ 
On the 19 th of October, being the anniversary of 

* On which occasion the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in command of the 
fleet, wrote him from Boston, November i8, 1782: "Je suis vraiment 
touche. Monsieur, de ne pouvoir pas avoir I'honneur de vous voir 
ici; je m'estimais heureux de renouveler la connaissance que j'avais 
faite avec vous a Brest chez M. d'Orvilliers. Mais je ne puis qu'ap- 
plaudir au parti que vous prenez d'eviter la tristesse des adieux 
et les temoignages de la sensibilite de tous vos ofiiciers en se voyant 
separes de leur chef qu'ils respectent et cherissent sincerement." 
(Rochambeau papers.) 

* An anecdote in the Autobiography of John Trumbull, the painter, 
well shows how lasting were the feelings for the land and the people 
taken home with them by the French. The artist tells of his reach- 
ing Mulhouse in 1795, finding it "full of troops," with no accommo- 
dation of any sort. He is taken to the old general in command: 

"The veteran looked at me keenly and asked bluntly: 'Who are 
you, an Englishman?' 

112 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 113 

Yorktown, Washington offered a dinner to the 
French officers, who on the same day took leave 
of him, never to see him again. "On that even- 
ing," says Closen, "we took leave of General 
Washington and of the other officers of our ac- 
quaintance, our troops being to sail on the 2 2d. 
There is no sort of kindness and tokens of good 
will we have not received from General Wash- 
ington; the idea of parting from the French army, 
probably forever, seemed to cause him real sor- 
row, having, as he had, received the most convinc- 
ing proofs of the respect, the veneration, the es- 
teem, and even the attachment which every in- 
dividual in the army felt for him." 



"'No, general, I am an American of the United States.* 

*"Ah! do you know Connecticut?' 

"'Yes, sir, it is my native State.' 

"'You know, then, the good Governor Trumbull?' 

'"Yes, general, he is my father.' 

"'Oh! mon Dieu, que je suis charme. . . . Entrez, entrez!"* 

And all that is best is placed at the disposal of the newcomer by 
the soldier, who turns out to be a former member of the Lauzun 
legion. The artist adds: "The old general kept me up almost all 
night, inquiring of everybody and of everything in America." Some 
papers are brought for him to sign, which he does with his left hand, 
and, Trumbull noticing it, "'Yes,' said he, 'last year, in Belgium, 
the Austrians cut me to pieces and left me for dead, but I recovered, 
and, finding my right hand ruined, I have learned to use my left, and 
I can write and fence with it tolerably.' 

"'But, sir,' said I, 'why did you not retire from service?' 

"'Retire !' exclaimed he. 'Ha ! I was born in a camp, have passed 
all my life in the service, and will die in a camp, or on the field.' 

"This is," Trumbull concludes, "a faithful picture of the military 
enthusiasm of the time — 1795." 



114 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

After having taken leave, "in tenderest fash- 
ion," of the American commander, who promised 
"an enduring fraternal friendship," Rochambeau, 
carrying with him two bronze field-pieces taken 
at Yorktown, presented by Congress, and adorned 
with inscriptions, the engraving of which had 
been supervised by Washington,^ sailed for France 
on the Enter aude, early in January, 1783, An 
English warship which had been cruising at the 
entrance of the Chesapeake nearly captiired him, 
and it was only by throwing overboard her spare 
masts and part of her artillery that the Emeraude, 
thus become lighter and faster, could escape. 
The general learned, on landing, of the peace 
which Vergennes had considered, from the first, 
as a certain, though not immediate, consequence 
of the taking of Yorktown. "The homages of all 
Frenchmen go to you," he had written to Ro- 
chambeau, adding: "You have restored to our 
arms all their lustre, and you have laid the comer- 
stone for the raising, which we expect, of an honor- 
able peace." The hour for it had now struck, 
and while Suffren had yet to win the naval battle 
of Goudelour, the preliminaries had been signed 
at Versailles on the 20th of January, 1783. 

^ " . . . An inscription engraved on them, expressive of the occa- 
sion. I find a difficulty in getting the engraving properly executed. 
WTien it will be finished, I shall with peculiar pleasure put the cannon 
into your possession." Washington to Rochambeau, February 3, 
1782. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 115 

The King, the ministers, the whole country 
gave Rochambeau the welcome he deserved. At 
his first audience on his return he had asked 
Louis XVI, as being his chief request, permission 
to divide the praise bestowed on him with the 
unfortunate de Grasse, now a prisoner of the 
English after the battle of the Saintes, where, 
fighting 30 against 37, he had lost seven ships, 
including the Ville de Paris (which had 400 dead 
and 500 wounded), all so damaged by the most 
furious resistance that, owing to grounding, to 
sinking, or to fire, not one reached the English 
waters.^ Rochambeau received the blue ribbon of 
the Holy Ghost, was appointed governor of Pic- 
ardy, and a few years later became a marshal 
of France. Owing to the proximity of his new 
post, he was able twice to visit England, where 
he met again his dear La Luzerne, now French 
ambassador* in London, and his former foe. Ad- 
miral Hood, who received him with open arms. 
But the tokens of friendship which touched him 
most came from officers of Comwallis's army: 
"They manifested," he writes, "in the most 
public manner their gratitude for the humanity 
with which they had been treated by the French 
army after their surrender." 

^De Grasse died in January, 1788. "The Cincinnati in some of 
the States have gone into mourning for him." Washington to 
Rochambeau, April 28, 1788. 



116 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Rochambeau was keeping up with Washington 
a most affectionate correspondence, still partly 
unpublished, the great American often reminding 
him of his "friendship and love" for his "com- 
panions in war," discussing a possible visit to 
France, and describing his life now spent "in 
rural employments and in contemplation of those 
friendships which the Revolution enabled me to 
form with so many worthy characters of your 
nation, through whose assistance I can now sit 
down in my calm retreat." Dreaming of a hu- 
manity less agitated than that he had known, 
dreaming dreams which were not to be soon re- 
alized, he was writing to Rochambeau, from Mount 
Vernon, on September 7, 1785: "Although it is 
against the profession of arms, I wish to see all 
the world at peace." 

"Much as he may wish to conceal himself and 
lead the life of a plain man, he will ever be the 
first citizen of the United States," La Luzerne 
had written to Vergennes, and the truth of the 
statement was shown when a unanimous election 
made of the former commander-in-chief the first 
President of the new republic, in the year when 
the States General met in France and our own 
Revolution began. 

Knowing the friendly dispositio^ preserved 
by Rochambeau toward Americans,^ Washington 

' Jefferson seems to have feared that the souvenir of Rochambeau 
might soon fade. He wrote to Madison, February 8, 1786: "Count 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 117 

often gave those going abroad letters of introduc- 
tion to him; one day the man was Gouvemeur 
Morris, so well known afterward; another day- 
it was a poet of great fame then, of not so great 
now. Less sure of his ground when the question 
was of Parnassus than when it was of battle- 
fields, Washington had described this traveller 
to Lafayette as being "considered by those who 
are good judges to be a genius of the first magni- 
tude." To Rochambeau he introduced him as 
"the author of an admirable poem in which he 
has worthily celebrated the glory of your nation 
in general, and of yourself in particular."^ The 
poet was that Joel Barlow, of Hartford, who, hav- 
ing become later minister of the United States to 
France, died in a Polish village in the course of a 
journey undertaken to present his credentials to 
the chief of the state, who, for important reasons, 
had been imable to grant him an audience else- 
where than in Russia, the year being 1812, and 
the sovereign Emperor Napoleon.^ 

The poem alluded to by Washington was an 

Rochambeau, too, has deserved more attention than he has received. 
Why not set up his bust, that of Gates, Greene, Franklin in your new 
Capitol?" No bust was placed in the Capitol, but the raising of 
the statue in Lafayette Square, Washington, in 1902, has proved 
that, after so many years, Rochambeau was not forgotten in America. 

iMay 28, 1788. 

- In a letter of July 31, 1789, Rochambeau informs Washington of 
Barlow's arrival, "and I made him all the good reception that he 
deserves by himself and by the honorable commendation that you 
give to him." In Rochambeau's English; Washington papers. 



118 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

epic one, called the Vision oj Columbus, in which 
an angel appears to the navigator in his legendary 
prison and reveals to him, in Virgilian fashion, 
the future of America. Washington, Wayne, 
Greene are thus shown him, as well as 

Brave Rochambeau in gleamy steel array'd, 

a description which, if brave Rochambeau ever 
saw it, must have made him smile. 

Rochambeau's letters are in such English as we 
have seen he had been able, with commendable 
zeal, to learn late in life. The French general 
keeps the American leader informed of what 
goes on in France, in England, and Europe, be- 
stows the highest praise on Pitt, "a wise man 
who sets finances (of the English) in good order," 
and gives an account of a visit paid him by Com- 
wallis at Calais: "I have seen Comwallis last 
summer at Calais. ... I gave him a supper in 
little committee;^ he was very polite, but, as you 
may believe, I could not drink with him your 
health in toast. "^ 

He tells Washington of Franklin's departure 
from France, very old, very ill, greatly admired, 
"having the courage to undertake so long a voy- 
age to go and die in the bosom of his native 
country. It will be impossible for him, at his 

^ Fr., "en petit comite" — a small party of friends. 
* January 7, 1786. Washington papers. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 119 

coming back [to] America, to go and visit you, but 
I told him that you would certainly go and see 
him, and that I had always heard you speaking 
of him in the best terms and having a great con- 
sideration for his respectable character. He will 
have a great joy to see you again, and I should be 
very happy if I coiild enjoy the same pleastue."^ 

An affectionate interest for one another and 
one another's families appears in all these letters, 
as well as a cherishing of common souvenirs. 
Rochambeau asks to be remembered to his former 
American comrades: "A thousand kindness[es] 
and compliments to Mr. Jefferson, to Mr. Knox, 
and to all my anciens camarades and friends which 
are near you."^ 

The Countess de Rochambeau sometimes takes 
up the pen, and in one of her letters appeals to 
Washington in favor of dear Closen who, though 
he had every right to be included in it, had been 
forgotten when the list of the original Cincinnati 
had been drawn up.^ The request was at once 
granted. 

1 Paris, June, 1785 (ibid). 

2 " Rochambeau near Vend6me, April 11, 1790." 

' Here is this letter in full : 

Paris the i8th November, 1790. 
Sir: 

I hope that your Excellency will give me the leave to beg a favor 
of your justice. I think it just to intercede for the Baron de Closen 
who was an aide-de-camp to Mr. Rochambeau during the Ameri- 
can war. He longs with the desire to be a member of the associa- 



120 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Two gouaches had been painted by the famous 
miniaturist Van Blarenberghe, one representing 
the storming of the redoubts at Yorktown, the 
other the surrender of the garrison. They were 
for the King, and are well known nowadays to 
every one familiar with the Versailles Museum. 
Their topographical accuracy is so remarkable that 
it had always been believed the painter had had 
the help of some French officer present at the 
siege. Rochambeau writes to Washington about 
those pictures and gives us the name of the officer 
who had actually helped the miniaturist, a well- 
known name, that of Berthier : ' ' [There have] been 
presented yesterday to the King, my dear general, 
two pictures to put in his closet (study) , which have 
been done by an excellent painter, one represent- 
ing the siege of York, and the other the defile of 
the British army between the American and the 
French armies. 

"Mr. le Marshal de Segur promised me copies 
of them which I will place in my closet on the 
right and left sides of your picture. Besides 
that they are excellent paintings, they have been 

tion of the Cincinnati. The officers who were employed in the 
French army and younger than him in the mihtary service have 
been decorated with this emblem of hberty, and such a reward given 
by your Excellency's hand shall increase its value. 

I flatter myself that you will receive the assurances of the respect 
and veneration I have for your talents and your virtue, well known 
in the whole world. 

I have (etc.), La Comtesse de Rochambeau. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 121 

drawn both by the truth and by an excellent de- 
sign by the young Berthier, who was deputed 
quartermaster at the said siege. "^ 

Washington having alluded, as he was fond of 
doing, to the rest he had at last secured for the 
remnant of his life, as he thought, under the 
shadow of his own vine and fig-tree, Rochambeau 
in his answer courteously and sincerely compli- 
ments him on the "philosophical" but not defini- 
tive quiet he now enjoys under the shadow — "of 
his laurel-tree.'*^ 

The War of the Austrian Succession had found 
Rochambeau already an officer in the French army ; 
the Revolution found him still an officer in the 
French army, defending the frontier as a marshal 
of France and commander-in-chief of the northern 
troops. In 1792 he definitively withdrew to Ro- 
chambeau, barely escaping with his life during 
the Terror. A striking and touching thing it is 
to note that, when a prisoner in that "horrible 
sepulchre," the Conciergerie, he appealed to the 

1 June, 1785. Two of the Berthier brothers had taken part, as we 
saw, in the expedition. The one alluded to here is the younger, 
Cesar-Gabriel, not the older, Louis-Alexandre, who became Prince 
de Wagram. Both are described in their "etats de service," pre- 
served among the Rochambeau papers, as expert draftsmen. The 
notice concerning the younger, who was a captain of dragoons, reads : 
"II s'est fait remarquer ainsi que son frere par son talent a dessiner 
et lever des plans." 

2 Concerning this correspondence, as continued during the French 
Revolution, see below, pp. 245 S. 



122 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

"Citizen President of the Revolutionary Tri- 
bunal," and invoked as a safeguard the great 
name of Washington, "my colleague and my friend 
in the war we made together for the liberty of 
America." 

Luckier than many of his companions in arms 
of the American war, than Lauzun, Custine, 
d'Estaing, Broglie, Dillon, and others, Rocham- 
beau escaped the scaffold. He lived long enough 
to see rise to glory that young man who was teach- 
ing the world better military tactics than even the 
book of Count de Guibert, Bonaparte, now First 
Consul of the French Republic. Bonaparte had 
great respect for the old marshal, who was pre- 
sented to him by the minister of war in 1803; he 
received him surrounded by his generals, and as 
the soldier of Klostercamp and Yorktown entered 
he said, "Monsieur le Marechal, here are your 
pupils"; and the old man answered: "They have 
surpassed their master." 

After having been very near death from his 
wounds in 1747, Rochambeau died only in 1807, 
being then in his castle of Rochambeau, in Vendo- 
mois, and aged eighty-two. He was buried in 
the neighboring village of Thore, in a tomb of 
black and white marble, in the classical style 
then in vogue. An inscription devised by his 
wife at the evening of a very long life, draws a 
touching picture of those qualities which had won 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 123 

her heart more than half a century before: "A 
model as admirable in his family as in his armies, 
an enlightened mind, indulgent, ever thinking of 
the interests of others ... a happy and honored 
old age has been for him the crowning of a spot- 
less life. Those who had been his vassals had 
become his children. . . . His tomb awaits me; 
before descending to it I have desired to engrave 
upon it the memory of so many merits and vir- 
tues, as a token of gratitude for fifty years of 
happiness." On a parallel slab one reads : "Here 
lies Jeanne Therese Telles d'Acosta, who died at 
Rochambeau, aged ninety-four. May 19, 1824." 

In the castle are still to be seen the exquisite por- 
trait, by Latour, of her who in her old age had 
written the inscription, several portraits of the 
marshal, and of his ancestors from the first Vi- 
meur, who had become, in the sixteenth century, 
lord of Rochambeau, the portrait in the white 
uniform of Auvergne of the old soldier's son, who 
died at Leipzig, the sword worn at Yorktown, the 
eagle of the Cincinnati side by side with the star 
of the Holy Ghost, the before-mentioned gouaches 
by Van Blarenberghe, a portrait of Washing- 
ton, given by him to his French friend and also 
mentioned in their correspondence, and many 
other historical relics. But the two bronze field- 
pieces offered by Congress are no longer there, 
having been commandeered during the Revolu- 



124 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

tion. In front of the simple and noble facade 
of the slate-roofed castle, at the foot of the ter- 
race, the Loir flows, brimful, between woods and 
meadows, the same river that fills such a great 
place in French literature, because of a distant 
relative of the Rochambeaus of old, Pierre de 
Ronsard. 

Visiting some years ago the place and the tomb, 
and standing beside the grave of the marshal, it 
occurred to me that it would be appropriate if 
some day trees from Mount Vernon could spread 
their shade over the remains of that friend of 
Washington and the American cause. With the 
assent of the family and of the mayor of Thore, 
and thanks to the good will of the ladies of the 
Mount Vernon Association, this idea was realized, 
and half a dozen seedlings from trees planted by 
Washington were sent to be placed around Ro- 
chambeau's monument: two elms, two maples, 
two redbuds, and six plants of ivy from Wash- 
ington's tomb. The last news received about 
them showed that they had taken root and were 
growing. 



X 

Some will, perhaps, desire to know what be- 
came of Closen. Sent to the Islands (the West 
Indies) with the rest of the army, he felt, like all 
his comrades, greatly disappointed, more even 
than the others, on account of his bride, whom 
American beauties had not caused him to forget. 
He had inserted in his journal a page of silhou- 
ettes representing a dozen of the latter, with the 
name inscribed on each; but he had taken care 
to write underneath: "Honni soit qui mal y 
pense." When about to go on board he writes: 
"I scarcely dare say what I experienced and 
which was the dominating sentiment, whether 
my attachment to all that I love or ambition 
added to sensitiveness on the principles of honor. 
Reason, however, soon took the lead and decided 
in favor of the latter. . . . Let me be patient 
and do my duty." 

To leave Rochambeau was for him one more 
cause of pain: "I shall never insist enough, nor 
sufficiently describe the sorrow I felt when sepa- 
rated from my worthy and respectable general; 
I lose more than any one else in the army. . . . 
Attentive as I was to all he had to say about 
battles, marches, the selection of positions, sieges, 

125 



126 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

in a word, to all that pertains to the profession, I 
have always tried to profit by his so instructive 
talks. ... I must be resigned." 

Once again, therefore, life begins on those de- 
tested "sabots," a large-sized sabot, this time, 
namely the Brave, of seventy-four guns, "quite 
recently lined with copper," a sad place of abode, 
however, in bad weather, or even in any weather: 
"One can scarcely imagine the bigness of the sea, 
the noise, the height of the waves, such pitching 
and rolling that it was impossible to stand; the 
ships disappearing at times as if they had been 
swallowed by the sea, to touch it the instant after 
only with a tiny bit of the keel. What a nasty 
element, and how sincerely we hate it, all of us 
of the land troops ! The lugubrious noise of the 
masts, the crics-cracs of the vessel, the terrible 
movements which on the sudden raise you, and 
to which we were not at all accustomed, the per- 
petual encumbrance that forty-five officers are 
for each other, forty having no other place of 
refuge than a single room for them all, the sad 
faces of those who are sick . . . the dirt, the 
boredom, the feeling that one is shut up in a 
sabot as in a state prison ... all this is only part 
of what goes to make life unpleasant for a land 
officer on a vessel, even a naval one. . . . Let 
us take courage."^ 

'December 29, 1782. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 127 

Few diversions. They meet a slave-ship under 
the Austrian flag, an "abominable and cruel 
sight," with "that iron chain rimning from one 
end of the ship to the other, the negroes being tied 
there, two and two," stark naked and harshly 
beaten if they make any movement which dis- 
pleases the captain. The latter, who is from Bor- 
deaux, salutes his coiintry's war flag with three 
"Vive le Roi!" They signal to him an answer 
which cannot be transcribed. No one knows 
where they go. "Sail on," philosophically writes 
Closen. 

They touch at Porto Rico, at Curasao, where 
the fleet is saddened by the loss of the Bourgogne, 
at Porto Cabello (Venezuela), where they make 
some stay, and where Closen loses no time in re- 
suming his observations on natives, men and 
beasts, tatous, monkeys, caimans, "enormous 
lizards quite different from ours," houses which 
consist in one ground floor divided into three 
rooms. The "company of the Caracque" (Ca- 
racas) keeps the people in a state of restraint 
and slavery. Taxation is enormous." Religious 
intolerance is very troublesome: "Though the In- 
quisition is not as rigorous in its searches as in 
Europe, for there is but one commissioner at 
Caracque, there is, however, too much fanaticism, 
too many absurd superstitions, in a word, too 
much ignorance among the inhabitants, who can 



128 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

never say a word or walk a step without saying an 
Ave, crossing themselves twenty times, or kissing 
a chaplet which they ever have dangling from 
their neck with a somewhat considerable accom- 
paniment of relics and crosses. One gentleman, 
in order to play a trick on me, in the private 
houses where I had gained access so as to satisfy 
my curiosity and desire of instruction, told a few 
people that I was a Protestant, What signs of 
the cross at the news ! And they would cease- 
lessly repeat: Malacca Christiana — a bad Chris- 
tian!" 

On the 24th of March (1783) great news reached 
them: the French vessel Andromaque arrived, 
"with the grand white flag on her foremast, as a 
signal of peace. The minute after all our men- 
of-war were decked with flags." There were a 
few more incidents, like the capture of some 
French officers, who were quietly rowing in open 
boats, by "the Albemarle, of twenty-four guns, 
commanded by Captain Nelson, of whom these 
gentlemen speak in the highest terms." As soon 
as the news of the peace was given him they were 
released by the future enemy of Napoleon. 

The hour for the return home had struck at 
last. It was delayed by brief stays in some parts 
of the French West Indies, notably Cap Fran- 
gais, Santo Domingo (now Cap Haitien). "A few 
days before our arrival at the Cape Prince William, 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 129 

Duke of Lancaster, third son of the King of Eng- 
land, had come and spent there two days, while 
the English squadron was cruising in the roads. 
Great festivities had been arranged in his honor," 
— for there was really no hatred against the enemy 
of the day before. 

Some calms and some storms also delayed the 
return, with the usual "criiiiicks craaaaaks" of 
the masts, the journey being occupied in tran- 
scribing the "notes and journals on the two 
Americas," and enlivened by the saving of the 
parrakeet of a Spanish lady who had been ad- 
mitted with her family on board the Brave. 
"Frightened by something, the little parrakeet 
flies off and falls into the sea. The lady's negro, 
luckily happening to be on the same side, jumps 
just as he is, with no time to think, dives, reap- 
pears, cries, ' Cato ! Cato ! ' joins the parrakeet, 
puts her on his woolly head, and returns to the 
ship." Delighted, the lady "allows this black 
saviour to kiss her hand, a unique distinction for 
a slave, and bestows on him a life pension of one 
hundred francs. Many sailors would have liked 
to do the same, had they known." 

Land is now descried; they see again the sights 
noted when sailing for America: these "coasts 
thick-decked with live people, fruit-trees and other 
delightful objects." All is delightful; the joy is 
universal; they make arrangements to reach 



130 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

Paris, which Closen did in magnificent style. 
"And I," we read in his journal, "after having 
bought a fine coach where I could place, before, 
behind, on the top, my servants, consisting of a 
white man and of my faithful and superb black 
Peter, and with them three monkeys, four parrots, 
and six parrakeets, posted to Paris in this com- 
pany, a noisy one and difficult to maintain clean 
and in good order, . . . The next day (June 22) 
I was at Saint-Pol-de-Leon, my last quarters be- 
fore sailing for America, and saw again with 
hearty rejoicings the respectable Kersabiec family 
which had so well tended me throughout my con- 
valescence after a deadly disease." He thought 
he could do no less than present them with one 
of his parrakeets as a token of "gratitude and 
friendship." 

At Guingamp he finds the Du Dresnays, other 
friends of his, and reaches Paris, he writes, on the 
30th of June, with "all my live beings of all colors, 
myself looking an Indian so tanned and sun- 
burnt was my face, exception made for my fore- 
head, which my hat had preserved quite white." 

The Rochambeau family made him leave his 
inn and stay with them in their beautiful house 
of the Rue du Cherche-Midi. The general ("my 
kind and respectable military father," says Closen) 
presented him to the minister of war. Marshal de 
Segur, who granted the young officer a flattering 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 131 

welcome, and the journal closes as novels used to 
end in olden days, and as the first part of well- 
ordered, happy lives will ever continue to end. 
Leaving Paris with the promise of a colonelcy en 
second — "a very eventual ministerial bouquet" — 
he went home to Deux-Ponts: "There I found 
my beautiful fiancee, my dear, my divine Doris, 
who had had the constancy to keep for me her 
heart and her hand diiring the four years of my 
absence in America, in spite of several proposals 
received by her, even from men much better en- 
dowed with worldly goods, my share consisting 
only in the before mentioned ministerial promise 
and in the reputation of an honest man and a 
good soldier." 

I shall only add that the ministerial promise 
was kept, and that it was as a colonel and a knight 
of Saint Louis that Closen found himself aide-de- 
camp again to his old chief, Rochambeau, charged 
with the defense of the northern frontier at the 
beginning of the Revolution.^ 

Faded inks, hushed voices. The remembrance 
of the work remains, however, and cannot fade; 

^ A lithographed portrait mentions the later-day titles and dig- 
nities of: "I. C. Louis, Baron de Closen, Marechal de Camp, cham- 
bellan et chevalier des ordres franfais pour le Merita et de la Legion 
d'honneiur, ainsi que de celui de Cincinnatus des Etats Unis de 
I'Amerique Septentrionale." Reproduced by C. W. Bowen, who 
first drew attention to this journal, Century Magazine, February, 
1907. Closen died in 1830, aged seventy-five. 



132 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 

for its grandeur becomes, from year to year, more 
apparent. In less than a century and a half New 
York has passed from the ten thousand inhabi- 
tants it possessed under Clinton to the five million 
and more of to-day. Philadelphia, once the chief 
city, "an immense town," Closen had called it, 
has now ten times more houses than it had citi- 
zens. Partly owing again to France, ceding, un- 
asked, the whole territory of Louisiana in 1803, the 
frontier of this country, which the upper Hudson 
formerly divided in its centre, has been pushed 
back to the Pacific ; the three million Americans of 
Washington and Rochambeau have become the 
one hundred million of to-day. From the time 
when the flags of the two countries floated on the 
ruins of Yorktown the equilibrium of the world 
has been altered. 

There is, perhaps, no case in which, with the 
unavoidable mixture of human interests, a war 
has been more undoubtedly waged for an idea. 
The fact was made obvious at the peace, when 
victorious France, being offered Canada for a 
separate settlement, refused,^ and kept her word 
not to accept any material advantage, the whole 

* Which was done in a letter giving as a reason "that, whenever the 
two crowns should come to treat, his Most Christian Majesty would 
show how much the engagements he might enter into were to be 
relied on, by his exact observance of those he had already had with 
his present allies." Quoted, as "a sentence which I much liked," 
by Franklin, writing to John Adams, April 13, 1782. 



ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 133 

nation being in accord, and the people illuminating 
for joy. 

The cause was a just one; even the adversary, 
many among whom had been from the first of 
that opinion, was not long to acknowledge it. 
Little by little, and in spite of some fitful re- 
awakening of former animosities, as was seen in 
the second War of Independence, hostile disposi- 
tions vanished. The three nations who had met 
in arms in Yorktown, the three whose ancestors 
had known a Hundred Years' War, have now 
known a hundred years' peace. "I wish to see 
all the world at peace," Washington had written 
to Rochambeau. For over a century now the 
three nations which fought at Yorktown have 
become friends, and in this measure at least the 
wish of the great American has been fulfilled. 



II 

MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE 
FEDERAL CITY 



MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE 
FEDERAL CITY 



LITTLE more than a century ago the hill 
on which rises the Capitol of the federal 
city and the ground around it were cov- 
ered with woods and underbrush; a few scattered 
farms had been built here and there, with one or 
two exceptions mere wooden structures whose 
low roofs scarcely emerged from their leafy sur- 
roundings. Not very long before, Indians had 
used to gather on that eminence and hold their 
council-fires. 

As far now as the eye can reach the picturesque 
outline of one of the finest cities that exist is dis- 
covered; steeples and pinnacles rise above the 
verdure of the trees lining the avenues within 
the unaltered frame supplied by the blue hills of 
Maryland and Virginia. 

The will of Congress, the choice made by the 
great man whose name the city was to bear, the 
talents of a French officer, caused this change. 

Debates and competitions had been very keen; 
more than one city of the North and of the South 
had put forth pleas to be the one selected and 

137 



V 



138 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

become the capital: Boston, where the first shot 
had been fired; Philadelphia, where independence 
had been proclaimed; Yorktown, where it had 
been won— Yorktown, modest as a city, but glori- 
ous by the events its name recalled, now an out- 
of-the-way borough, rarely visited, and where 
fifty white inhabitants are all that people the 
would-be capital of the new-bom Union. New 
York also had been in the ranks, as well as King- 
ston, Newport, Wilmington, Trenton, Reading, 
Lancaster, Annapolis, Williamsburg, and several 
others. Passions were stirred to such an extent 
that the worst was feared, and that, incredible as 
it may now seem, Jefferson could speak of the 
"necessity of a compromise to save the Union." 

A compromise was, in fact, resorted to, which 
consisted in choosing no city already in existence, 
but building a new one on purpose. This solu- 
tion had been early thought of, for Washington 
had written on October 12, 1783, to Chevalier de 
Chastellux: "They (Congress) have lately deter- 
mined to make choice of some convenient spot 
near the Falls of the Delaware for the permanent 
residence of the sovereign power of these United 
States." But would-be capitals still persisted in 
hoping they might be selected. 

Congress made up its mind for good on the 1 6th 
of July, 1790, and decided that the President 
should be intrusted with the care of choosing "on 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 139 

the river Potomac" a territory, ten miles square, 
which should become the "Federal territory" and 
the permanent seat of the Government of the 
United States. 

Washington thereupon quickly reached a de- 
cision; a great rider all his life, the hills and vales 
of the region were familiar to him; it soon be- 
came certain that the federal city would rise one 
day where it now stands. The spot seemed to 
him a particularly appropriate one for a reason 
which has long ceased to be so very telling, and 
which he constantly mentions in his letters as 
the place's "centrality." 

But what sort of a city should it be ? A resi- 
dential one for statesmen, legislators, and judges, 
or a commercial one with the possibilities, con- 
sidered then of the first order, afforded by the 
river, or a mixture of both ? Should it be planned 
in view of the present or of the future, and of 
what sort of future ? 

With the mind of an artist and in some sense of 
a prophet, perceiving future time as clearly as if / 
it were the present, a man foresaw, over a cen- '' 
tury ago, what we now see with our eyes. He . / 

was a French officer who had fought for the cause 
of independence, and had remained in America 
after the war. Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant. 

Some researches in French and American 
archives have allowed me to trace his ancestry, 



140 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

and to add a few particulars to what was already 
known of him. 

Bom at Paris, on August 2, 1754, he was the 
son of Pierre L' Enfant, "Painter in ordinary to 
the King in his Manufacture of the Gobelins." 
The painter, whose wife was Marie Charlotte Leul- 
lier, had for his specialty landscapes and battle- 
scenes. Bom at Anet, in 1704, on a farm which 
he bequeathed to his children, he was a pupil of 
Parrocel and had been elected an Academician in 
1745. Some of his pictures are at Tours; six are 
at Versailles, representing as many French vic- 
tories: the taking of Menin, 1744; of Fribourg, 
1744; of Toumay, 1745; the battle of Fontenoy, 
1745 (a favorite subject, several times painted by 
him); the battle of Laufeldt, 1747, where that 
young officer, destined to be Washington's partner 
in the Yorktown campaign. Count Rochambeau, 
received, as we have seen before, his first wounds. 
The painter died a very old man, in the Royal 
Manufacture, 1787. 

Young L' Enfant grew up among artistic sur- 
roundings, and, as subsequent events showed, re- 
ceived instruction as an architect and engineer. 
The cause of the United States had in him one 
of its earliest enthusiasts. In 1777, being then 
twenty-three, possessed of a commission of lieu- 
tenant in the French colonial troops, he sailed 
for America on one of those ships belonging to 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 141 

Beaumarchais's mythical firm of "Hortalez and 
Co.," a firm whose cargoes consisted in soldiers 
and ammunition for the insurgents, and which 
was as much a product of the dramatist's brain 
as Figaro himself. Figaro, it is averred, has had 
a great influence in this world; Hortalez and Co. 
had not a small one, either. The ship had been 
named after the secretary of state, who was to 
sign, the following year, the United States' only 
alliance, Le Comte de Vergennes, a name, wrote 
Beaumarchais, "fit to bring luck to the cargo, 
which is superb." The superb cargo consisted, 
as usual, in guns and war supplies, also in men 
who might be of no less use for the particular 
sort of trade Hortalez and Co. were conducting. 
"Some good engineers and some cavalry officers 
will soon arrive," Silas Deane was then writing 
to Congress. One of the engineers was Pierre 
Charles L'Enfant. His coming had preceded by 
one month the sailing of another ship with an- 
other appropriate name, the ship La Victoire, 
which brought Lafayette. 

L'Enfant served first as a volunteer and at his 
own expense. "In February, 1778," we read in 
an unpublished letter of his to Washington, ' ' I was 
honored with a cornmission of captain of en- 
gineers, and by leave of Congress attached to the 
Inspector-general. . . . Seeing [after the winter 
of 1778-9] no appearance of an active campaign 



v/ 



142 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

to the northward, my whole ambition was to at- 
tend the Southern army, where it was Hkely the 
seat of war would be transferred." He was, ac- 
cordingly, sent to Charleston, and obtained "leave 
to join the light infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel 
Laurens; his friendship furnished me," he relates, 
"with many opportunities of seeing the enemy to 
advantage."^ 

Not "to advantage," however, did he fight at 
Savannah, when the French and Americans, un- 
der d'Estaing and Lincoln, were repulsed with ter- 
rible loss. The young captain was leading one of 
the vanguard columns in the American contin- 
gent and, like d'Estaing himself, was grievously 
wounded. He managed to escape to Charleston. 
I was, he said, "in my bed till January, 1780. 
My weak state of health did not permit me to 
work at the fortifications of Charleston, and when 
the enemy debarked, I was still obliged to use a 
crutch."^ He took part, however, in the fight, 
replacing a wounded major, and was made a 
, prisoner at the capitulation. Rochambeau ne- 
gotiated his exchange in January, 1782, for Cap- 
tain von Heyden, a Hessian officer. 

"Your zeal and active services," Washington 
wrote back to L'Enfant, "are such as reflect the 

» Philadelphia, February i8, 1782. Washington papers, Library 
of Congress. 
* Same letter. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 143 

highest honor on yourself and are extremely 
pleasing to me, and I have no doubt they will 
have their due weight with Congress in any 
future promotion in your corps." ^ They had, 
in fact, in the following year, when, by a vote of 
the assembly, L'Enfant was promoted a major 
of engineers, 1783. 

— ^is knowledge of the art of fortification, his 
merit as a disciplinarian, the part he had taken, as 
he recalls in a letter to Count de La Luzerne,^ in 
devising the earliest "system of discipline and 
exercises which was finally adopted in the Ameri- 
can army" (all that was done in that line was not 
by Steuben alone), rendered his services quite 
useful. His gifts as an artist, his cleverness at 
catching likenesses made him welcome among 
his brother officers. He would in the dreary days 
of Valley Forge draw pencil portraits of them, 
one, we know, of Washington, at the request of 
Lafayette, who wanted also to have a painted 
portrait. "I misunderstood you," the general 
wrote him from Fredericksburg, on September 25, 
1778; "else I would have had the picture made 
by Peale when he was at Valley Forge. When 
you requested me to sit to Monsieur Lanfang" — 
thus spelled, showing how pronounced by Wash- 

* March i, 1782. Washington papers. 

^ Brother of the minister to the United States, New York, Decem- 
ber 10, 1787; impublished. Archives of the French Ministry of 
Colonies. 



/ 



144 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

ington — "I thought it was only to obtain the 
outHnes and a few shades of my features, to have 
some prints struck from." 

Some such pencil portraits by L' Enfant subsist, 
for example in the Glover family at Washington, 
and are creditable and obviously true-to-natvu-e 
sketches. 

Whenever, during the war or after, something 
in any way connected with art was wanted, L'En- 
fant was, as a matter of coiirse, appealed to, 
whether the question was of a portrait, of a ban- 
queting hall, of a marble palace, a jewel, a solemn 
procession, a fortress to be raised, or a city to be 
planned. A man of many accomplishments, with 
an overflow of ideas and few competitors, he was 
the factotum of the new nation. When the 
French minister. La Luzerne, desired to arrange 
a grand banquet in honor of the birth of the 
Dauphin (the first one, who lived only eight 
years), he had a hall built on purpose, in Phila- 
delphia, and L'Enfant was the designer. Baron 
de Closen, Rochambeau's aide, writes as to this 
in his journal: "M. de La Luzerne offered a din- 
ner that day to the legion of Lauzun, which had 
arrived the same morning (August 2, 1782). The 
hall which he caused to be built on purpose for 
the fete he gave on the occasion of the birth 
of the Dauphin, is very large and as beautiful as 
it can be. One cannot imagine a. building in 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 145 

better taste; simplicity is there united with an 
air of dignity. It has been erected under the 
direction of Mr. de L' Enfant, a French officer, in 
the service of the American corps of engineers." 
Closen adds that "Mr. Barbe de Marbois,^ coun- 
selor of embassy of our court, is too modest to 
admit that his advice had something to do with 
the result." 

When peace came, those officers who had fought 
shoulder to shoulder with the Americans re- 
turned home, bringing to the olci continent new 
and fruitful ideas, those especially pertaining to 
equality and to the unreasonableness of class dis- 
tinctions. Liberty had been learned from Eng- 
land; equality was from America. 

L'Enfant was one of those who went back to 
France, but he did not stay. He had been away 
five years and wanted to see his old father, the 
painter, whose end now was near. A royal brevet 
of June 13, 1783, had conferred on the officer a 
small French pension of three hundred livres, "in 
consideration of the usefulness of his services, and 
of the wounds received by him during the Ameri- 
can war." ^ He sailed for France late in the same 
year, reaching Havre on the 8 th of December. 

The Society of the Cincinnati had been founded 
in May. For the insignia appeal had been made 

^Mentioned before, p. 21. 

* Brevet 14,302. Archives of the Ministry of War, Paris. 



146 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

as usual to the artist of the army,^ L' Enfant, who 
was, moreover, commissioned by Washington, 
first president of the association, to avail himself 
of his journey to order from some good Paris 
jeweller the eagles to be worn by the members, 
L'Enfant himself being one. He was also to 
help in organizing the French branch of the so- 
ciety. Difficulties had first been encountered, 
for the reason that no foreign order was then 
allowed in France, but it was recognized that this 
could scarcely be* considered a foreign one. In an 
impublished letter to Rochambeau, Marshal de 
Segur, minister of war, said: "His Majesty the 
King asks me to inform you that he allows you 
to accept this honorable invitation (to be a mem- 
ber). He even wants you to assure General 
Washington, in his behalf, that he will always 
see with extreme satisfaction all that may lead 
to a maintenance and strengthening of the ties 
formed between France and the United States. 
The successes and the glory which have been the 
result and fruit of this union have shown how 

* Steuben writes him from West Point on July i, 1783, sending him 
"a resolution of the convention of the Cincinnati of June 19, 1783, 
by which I am requested," he says, "to transmit their thanks to 
you for your care and ingenuity in preparing the designs which were 
laid before them by the president on that day." Original in the 
L'Enfant papers, in the possession of Doctor James Dudley Morgan, 
of Washington, a descendant of the Digges family, the last friends of 
L'Enfant. To him my thanks are due for having allowed me to use 
those valuable documents. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 147 

advantageous it is, and that it shoiild be perpetu- 
ated." Concerning the institution itself the min- 
ister wrote: "It is equally honorable because of 
the spirit which has inspired its creation and of 
the virtues and talents of the celebrated general 
whom it has chosen as its president."^ 

L'Enfant sent to Washington glowing accounts 
of the way the idea had been welcomed in France, 
and told him of the first meetings held, one at the 
house of Rochambeau, Rue du Cherche-Midi, for 
officers in the French service, and another at the 
house of Lafayette, Rue de Bourbon, for French 
officers who held their commissions from Congress, 
■both groups deciding thereupon to unite, under 
Admiral d'Estaing as president-general.^ 

What proved for L'Enfant, according to cir- 
cumstances, one of his chief qualities, as well as 
one of his chief defects, was that, whatever the 
occasion, he ever saw "en grand." It had been 
understood that he would pay the expenses of 
his journey, and that the Society of the Cincinnati 
would only take charge of those resulting from 
the making of the eagles. His own modest re- 
sources had been, as Duportail testified, freely 
spent by him during the war for the good of the 
cause, and little enough was left him. Never- 

1 December i8, 1783. Rochambeau papers. 

' Asa Bird Gardner, The Order of the Cincinnati in France, 1905, 
pp. 9 ff. 



148 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

theless, did he write to Alexander Hamilton, 
"being arrived in France, everything there con- 
curred to strengthen the sentiment which had 
made me undertake that voyage, and the recep- 
tion which the Cincinnati met with soon induced 
me to appear in that country in a manner con- 
sistent with the dignity of the society of which I 
was regarded as the representative." He spent 
without counting: "My abode at the court pro- 
duced expenses far beyond the sums I had at 
first thought of." He ordered the eagles from the 
best ' ' artists, who rivalled each other for the honor 
of working for the society," ^ but wanted, however, 
to be paid; and a letter to Rochambeau, written 
later, shows him grappling with the problem of 
satisfying Duval and Francastel of Paris, who had 
supplied the eagles on credit, and to whom the 
large sum of twenty-two thousand three hundred 
and three livres were still due. These money 
troubles caused L'Enfant to shorten his stay in 
France; he was back in New York on the 29th 
of April, 1784, and after some discussion and de- 
lay, the society "Resolved, that, in consideration 
of services rendered by Major L'Enfant, the gen- 
eral meeting make arrangements for advancing 
him the sum of one thousand five hundred and 
forty-eight dollars, being the amount of the loss 

'An undated memoir (May, 1787?), in the Hamilton papers, 
Library of Congress. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 149 

incurred by him in the negotiation for a number 
of eagles, or orders, of the Cincinnati." ^ 

• Text annexed to L'Enf ant's letter to Rochambeau, June 15, 1786. 
(Rochambeau papers.) On August i, 1787, however, Francastel was 
still unpaid, for at that date one of L'Enfant's friends, Duplessis, 
i. «., the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, who, like himself, had 
served as a volunteer in the American army, writes him: "J'ai vu 
ici M. Francastel le bijoutier qui vous a fait une fourniture con- 
siderable de medailles de Cincinnatus et qui m'a dit que vous lui 
deviez 20,000 livres, je crois, plus ou moins. Je I'ai fort rassur6 
sur votre probite." (L'Enfant papers.) 



II 

The country was free; war was over now, 
people felt; for ever, many fondly hoped. Set- 
tled in New York, where appeals to his talents 
as an architect and engineer made him prosperous 
for a time, L'Enfant believed such hopes to be 
vain, and that the country should at once make 
preparations so exhaustive that its wealth and de- 
fenselessness should not tempt any greedy enemy. 
He placed the problem before Congress, in a 
memoir still unprinted, which offers particular in- 
terest in our days, when the same problem is being 
again discussed. 

"Sensible," wrote L'Enfant, in the creditable 
if not faultless English he then spoke,^ "of the 
situation of affairs, and well impregnated with the 
spirit of republican government, I am far from 
intimating the idea of following other nations in 
their way of securing themselves against insult or 
invasions, surrounded as they are with powerful 
neighbors, who, being the objects of reciprocal 
jealousy, are forced to secure not only their fron- 

^ Only his orthography is corrected in the quotations. Orthog- 
raphy was not L'Enfant's strong point in any language. His mis- 
takes are even worse in French than in English, the reason being, 
probably, that he took even less pains. 

150 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 151 

tier, but even their inland towns with fortifica- 
tions, the much happier situation of the United 
States rendering those measures of Httle or no 
necessity." 

The States must act differently; but not to 
act at all would be folly. "How and upon what 
foundations could it be supposed that America 
will have nothing to fear from a rupture between 
any of the European Powers ? . . . A neutral 
Power, it will be said, receives the benefit of a 
universal trade, has his possessions respected, as 
well as his colors, by all the Powers at war. This 
may be said of a powerful nation, but this America 
is not to expect; a neutral Power must be ready 
for war, and his trade depends on the means of 
protecting and making his colors respected. 
America, neutral without [a] navy, without troops 
or fortified harbors could have nothing but ca- 
lamity to expect." She cannot live free and de- 
velop in safety without "power to resent, ability 
to protect." 

A noteworthy statement, to be sure, and which 
deserves to be remembered. L'Enfant draws, 
thereupon, a plan of defense, especially insisting, 
of course, on the importance of his own particular 
branch, namely engineering.^ 

' Unpublished, n. d., but probably of 1784. (Papers of the Con- 
tinental Congress — Letters, vol. LXXVIII, p. 583, Library of Con- 
gress.) His ambition would have been to be asked to realize his 
own plan, "as Brigadier-General Kosciusko, at leaving this conti- 



152 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

Houdon's brief visit, shortly after, in order to 
make Washington's statue for the State of Vir- 
ginia,^ must have been particularly pleasant to 
the major, to whom the great sculptor could bring 
news of his co- Academician, the old painter of the 
Gobelins Manufacture, father of the officer. 

An unprinted letter of L' Enfant to the secre- 
tary of Congress, sitting then in New York, gives 
a number of details on Houdon's stay in America. 
The Federal Congress had thought of ordering, 
in its turn, a statue of Washington, which would 
have been an equestrian one ; but what would the 
cost be? A most important question in those 
days. On behalf of Houdon, who knew no Eng- 
lish, L'Enfant wrote to Charles Thomson that 
Mr. Houdon could not "properly hazard to give 
him any answer relating [to] the cost of the 
general's equestrian statue"; there are a great 
many ways of making such work, and Congress 
must say which it prefers. A book belonging to 
Mr. Houdon will shortly reach these shores, where 
particulars as to the "performance of the several 
statues which have been created in Europe are 
mentioned, together with their cost." The book 
is on a vessel, soon expected, and which brings 
back Doctor Franklin's "bagage." 

nent, gave me the flattering expectation of being at the head of 
[such] a department." 
> On this visit, see below, p. 225. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 153 

Congress had thought also of a marble bust for 
the hall where it sat. Houdon was taking home 
with him a finished model of the head of the great 
man, and had exhibited it, for every one to say 
his say, in the "room of Congress." 

Such busts, L'Enfant wrote, are "generally paid 
in Europe five thousand French livres"; but as 
many duplicates will probably be ordered from 
him, Houdon will lower the price to one hundred 
guineas. "He begs leave, however, to observe 
that a bust of the size of nature only may be fit 
for a private and small room, but not for such a 
large one as that devoted for the assembly of a 
Congress, where it should be necessary to have 
a bust of a larger size to have it appear to ad- 
vantage." 

The price had been asked, too, of duplicates in 
plaster of Paris, for private citizens. The answer 
was: four guineas, also in the thought that a 
goodly number would be wanted, "provided that 
there be a subscription for a large number, and 
that the gentlemen who will have any of these 
busts in their possession consider themselves as 
engaged to prevent any copy from being taken; 
this last condition he humbly insists upon." 

As for the original, Houdon is anxious to know 
what the compatriots of the general think of it; 
any criticism would be welcome: "Mr, Houdon 
hopes that Congress is satisfied with the bust he 



154 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

has had the honor to submit to their examination, 
begs the gentlemen who may have some objections 
to communicate them to him, and he flatters him- 
self that Congress will favor him with their opin- 
ion in writing, which he will consider as a proof 
of their satisfaction and keep as a testimony of 
their goodness." 

He is just about to sail, and the bust has to be 
removed at once : ' ' Mr. Houdon, being to embark 
to-morrow morning, begs leave to take out the 
general's bust from the room of Congress this 
afternoon."^ 

L'Enfant's chief work in New York consisted 
in the remodelling of the old, or rather older (but 
not oldest), City Hall, the one which preceded that 
now known, in its turn, as the old one. The 
undertaking was of importance, the question being 
of better accommodating Congress, which had 
left Philadelphia with a grudge toward that city, 
and was now sitting in New York. A large sum, 
for those days, had been advanced by patriotic 
citizens, which sum, however, L'Enfant's habit 
to see things "en grand" caused to be insufficient 
by more than half. The city hoped that the de- 
vising of such a structure wotdd be for it one more 
title to be selected as the federal capital, and it 
therefore did not protest, but on the contrary 

1 New York, 3d November, 1785. Papers of the Continental 
Congress — Letters, 1. 78, vol. XIV, p. 677. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 155 

caused a "testimonial" to be officially presented 
to L' Enfant, highly praising his work: "While 
the hall exists it will exhibit a most respectable 
monument of your eminent talents, as well as of 
the munificence of the citizens."^ L'Enfant re- 
ceived "the freedom of the city" by "special 
honorifick patent," as he wrote later, and he was, 
moreover, offered ten acres of land near Provost 
Lane, "which latter he politely declined."^ 

The building won general admiration for its 
noble appearance, the tasteful brilliancy of its 
ornamentation, and its commodious internal ar- 
rangements. The only objections came from the 
Anti-Federalists, who called it the "Fools' Trap," 
in which appellation politics had, obviously, more 
to do than architecture. 

L'Enfant, a man of ideas, had tried to make of 
the renovated hall something characteristically 
American, if not in the general style, which was 
classical, at least in many details. National re- 
sources had been turned into use; in the Senate 
chamber the chimneys were of American marble, 
which, "for beauties of shade and polish, is equal to 
any of its kind in Europe."^ The capitals of the 
pilasters were " of a fanciful kind, the invention of 
Major L'Enfant, the architect. . . . Amidst their 

* October 13, 1789. 

' Taggart, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XI, 215. 
' Thomas E. V. Smith, The City of New York in lySg, p. 46, quoting 
contemporary magazines. 



156 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

foliage appears a star and rays, and a piece of 
drapery below suspends a small medallion with 
U. S. in a cipher. The idea is new and the efEect 
pleasing; and although they cannot be said to be of 
any ancient order, we must allow that they have 
an appearance of magnificence." ^ The frieze out- 
side was so divided as to give room for thirteen 
stars in so many metopes. A much-talked-of 
eagle, with thirteen arrows in its talons, which, 
unluckily, could not be ready for March 4, 1789, 
when Congress met in the hall for the first time 
under the newly voted Constitution, was the chief 
ornament on the pediment. On the 2 2d of April 
the news could be sent to the Salem Mercury: 
"The eagle in front of the Federal State-House 
is displayed. The general appearance of this 
front is truly august."^ The emblem was thus 
at its proper place when the chief event that 
Federal Hall, as it was then called, was to witness 
occurred, on the 30th of the same month, the day 
of the first inauguration of the first President of 
the United States. 

Crowds came to visit what was then the most 
beautiful building in the country; but better than 
crowds came, and one visit was for the major 
more touching and flattering than all the others 

^Ibid. 

' C. M. Bowen, The Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of 
George Washington, 1892, pp. 15, 16. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 157 

put together — the wife of his general, now the 
President, Mrs. Washington, caused Colonel Hum- 
phreys and Mr. Lear to make arrangements with 
L'Enfant for her to inspect the hall, in June of the 
inauguration year.^ 

The expensive and greatly admired monument 
was to experience the strange fate of being sur- 
vived by its author. Becoming again City Hall 
when Congress, soon after, left New York to go 
back, reconciled, to Philadelphia, it was pulled 
down in 1812, the building itself being sold at 
auction for four hundred and twenty-five dollars: 
and thus disappeared, to the regret of all lovers 
of ancient souvenirs, the beautiful chimneys in 
American marble, the "truly august" eagle with 
its thirteen arrows, and the first really American 
capitals ever devised, and which, though in a new 
style, were yet "magnificent." 

One solitary souvenir of the building remains, 
however, that is, the middle part of the railing on 
which Washington must have leaned when taking 
the oath; a piece of wrought iron of a fine orna- 
mental style, now preserved with so many other 
interesting relics of old New York on the ground 
floor of the New York Historical Society's Mu- 
seiim. In the same room can be seen several 

* "Mr. Lear does himself the honor to inform Major L'Enfant that 
Mrs. Washington intends to visit the federal building at six o'clock 
this evening. — Saturday morning, 13th June, 1789." (L'Enfant 
papers.) 



158 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

contemporary views of Federal Hall, one in water- 
color, by Robertson, 1798; another, an engrav- 
ing, showing every detail of the fagade, represents, 
as the inscription runs, "Federal Hall, the Seat 
of Congress. — Printed and sold by A. Doolittle, 
New Haven, 1790. — ^A. Doolittle Sc. Pet. Lacour 
del." 

Shortly before the inauguration of the first 
President, L'Enfant had had to lend his help for 
the devising of a grand, artistic, historical, and es- 
pecially political procession, a Federalist one, 
arranged in the hope of influencing pubHc opinion 
and securing the vote of the Constitution by the 
State of New York. This now revered text was 
then the subject of ardent criticism; famous pa- 
triots like Patrick Henry had detected in it some- 
thing royalistic, which has long ceased to be ap- 
parent, and were violent in their denunciation 
of this instrument of tyranny. New York was 
in doubt ; its convention had met at Poughkeepsie 
in June, 1788, and it seemed as if an adverse vote 
were possible. The procession was then thought of. 

It took place on Monday, the 23d of July, and 
was a grand affair, with artillery salute, trumpe- 
ters, foresters, Christopher Columbus on horse- 
back, farmers, gardeners, the Society of the Cincin- 
nati "in full military uniform," brewers showing 
in their ranks, * ' mounted on a tun of ale, a beauti- 
ful boy of eight years, in close-fitting, flesh-colored 



I 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 159 

silk, representing Bacchus, with a silver goblet in 
his hand," butchers, tanners, cordwainers "sur- 
rounding the car of the Sons of Saint Crispin," 
furriers exhibiting "an Indian in native costume, 
loaded with furs, notwithstanding it was one of 
the hottest days in July." ^ 

The chief object of wonder was the good 
ship Hamilton, presented by the ship-carpenters, 
mounted on wheels, a perfect frigate of thirty- 
two guns, with its crew, complete, firing salutes 
on its way. The confectioners surrounded an 
immense "Federal cake." The judges and law- 
yers were followed by "John Lawrence, John 
Cozine, and Robert Troup, bearing the new Con- 
stitution elegantly engrossed on vellum, and ten 
students of law followed, bearing in order the rati- 
fication of the ten States." ^ The tin-plate work- 
ers exhibited "the Federal tin warehouse, raised 
on ten pillars, with the motto: 

When three more pillars rise, 

Our Union will the world surprise." 

— tin-plate poetry, for the tin warehouse. Then 
came learned men, physicians, clergymen, the re- 

1 Martha J. Lamb, History of the City of New York, 1881, vol. II, 
pp. 321 ff. 

' Ten had already voted the Constitution, which made its enact- 
ment certain, for Congress had decided that an adoption by nine 
States would be enough for that. As is well known, there remained 
in the end only two dissenting States, North Carolina and Rhode 
Island. 



160 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

gent and students of Columbia University, schol- 
ars, and among them Noah Webster, famous 
since as a lexicographer, and then as a professor 
and journalist, now admired by everybody, but, 
in those days of strife, only by Federalists — "a 
mere pedagogue," disdainfully wrote Jefferson 
later, "of very limited understanding and very 
strong prejudices," in saying which he himself, 
maybe, showed some prejudice, too.^ 

A grand banquet, at which, according to the 
New York Journal and Weekly Register,'^ bullocks 
were roasted whole for the "regale" of the guests, 
was held at the extreme point reached by the pro- 
cession, called by the same paper the ' ' parade des 
fetes champetres." The President and members 
of Congress sat under a dome devised by L'En- 
fant. It was "surmounted by a figure of Fame, 
with a trumpet proclaiming a new era, and hold- 
ing a scroll emblematic of the three great epochs 
of the war: Independence — Alliance with France — 
Peacer^ 

This was greatly admired. "The committee," 
we read in a note printed by their order in the 
Imperial Gazetteer, "would be insensible of the 
zeal and merit of Major L'Enfant were they to 
omit expressing the obligation which they are 
under to him for the elegance of the design and 

*To James Madison, August 12, 1801. 

2 Number of July 24, 1788. ' Martha J. Lamb, ihid. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 161 

the excellence of the execution of the pavilion and 
tables." 1 

The whole was a considerable success. "As it 
redounds much to the credit of the citizens, ..." 
another paper observes, "it ought to be remarked 
that there was not the least outrage, or even in- 
decency, notwithstanding 6,000 or 7,000 people 
(as supposed, spectators included) had collected, 
and that the whole company was dismissed at 
half after five o'clock." ^ 

Three days after the procession the vote was 
taken at Poughkeepsie, and if any influence at all 
could be attributed to the effect on public opinion 
of the quasi-mediaeval pageant, its organizers must 
have felt proud, for in an assembly of fifty-seven 
the Constitution was actually voted by a majority 
of two. 

'July 26, 1788. ^New York Journal, July 24. 



Ill 

The same year in which the New York Federal 
Hall had seen the inauguration of the first Presi- 
dent, the chance of his life came to L'Enfant. He 
deserved it, because he not only availed himself 
of it, but went forth to meet it, giving up his abode 
in New York, "where I stood at the time," he 
wrote later, "able of commanding whatever 
business I liked." This was the founding of the 
federal city. 

The impression was a general one among the 
French that those insurgents whom they had 
helped to become a free nation were to be a great 
one, too. Leaving England, where he was a 
refugee during our Revolution, Talleyrand de- 
cided to come to the United States, "desirous 
of seeing," he says in his memoirs, "that great 
country whose history begins." General Mo- 
reau, also a refugee, a few years later spoke with 
the same confidence of the future of the country: 
"I had pictured to myself the advantages of liv- 
ing under a free government ; but I had conceived 
only in part what such happiness is: here it is 
enjoyed to the full. ... It is impossible for men 
who have lived under such a government to allow 
themselves ever to be subjugated; they would be 

162 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 163 

very great cowards if they did not perish to the 
last in order to defend it."^ 

L'Enfant, with his tendency to see things "en 
grand," cotdd not fail to act accordingly, and the 
moment he heard that the federal city would be 
neither New York nor Philadelphia, nor any other 
already in existence, but one to be built expressly, 
he wrote to Washington a letter remarkable by 
his clear understanding of the opportunity offered 
to the country,, and by his determined purpose to 
work not for the three million inhabitants of his 
day, but for the one hundred of ours, and for all 
the unborn millions that will come after us. 
s^ The letter is dated from New York, nth of ^ 

/^ September, 1789. "Sir," he said, " the late deter- 
mination of Congress to lay the foundation of a 
city which is to become the capital of this vast 
empire offers so great an occasion of acquiring 
reputation to whoever may be appointed to con- 
duct the execution of the business that your 
Excellency will not be surprised that my ambi- 
tion and the desire I have of becoming a useful 
citizen should lead me to wish a share in the 
imdertaking. 

"No nation, perhaps, had ever before the op- j^/ 
portunity offered them of deliberately deciding 
on the spot where their capital city should be 

'To his brother, Philadelphia, November 17, 1806. Re,vut des 
Deux Motides, November 15, 1908, p. 421. 



164 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

fixed. . . . And, although the means now within 
the power of the country are not such as to pur- 
sue the design to any great extent, it will be ob- 
vious that the plan should be drawn on such a 
scale as to leave room for that aggrandizement and 
embellishment which the increase of the wealth 
of the nation will permit it to pursue at any period, 
however remote. Viewing the matter in this light, 
I am fully sensible of the extent of the under- 
taking. "^ 

Washington knew that L' Enfant was afflicted, 
to be sure, with an " untowaxa " temper, being 
haughty, proud, JntractaHe, but that he was 
honest withal, sincere^ loyafTf ull of ideas, and re- 
markably gifted.y He decided to intrust him with 
the great task, thus justifying, a little later, his 
selection : ' ' Since my first knowledge of the gentle- 
man's abilities in the line of his profession, I have 
received him not only as a scientific man, but one 
who has added considerable taste to professional 
j knowledge; and that, for such employment as he 
' is now engaged in, for prosecuting public works 
■ and carrying them into effect, he was better quali- 
: fied than any one who had come within my knowl- 
i edge in this country. "^ The President informed 

^ i L'Enfant that he was to set to work at once, and 

I 

' ' Original (several times printed in part) in the Library of Con- 
' gress, Miscellaneous — Personal. The rest of the letter treats of the 
necessity of fortifying the coasts. 

'To David Stuart, November 20, 1791. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 165 

so bestir himself as to have at least a general 
plan to show a few months later, when he himself 
would return from a trip South. On March 2, 
1 791, Washington announced to Colonel Dickens, 
of Georgetown, the coming of the major: "An 
eminent French military engineer starts for George- 
town to examine and survey the site of the federal 
city." A few days later the arrival of "Major 
Longfont" was duly recorded by the Georgetown 
Weekly Ledger} 

L'Enfant's enthusiasm and his desire to do 
well and quickly had been raised to a high pitch. 
He reached the place a few days later and found it 
wrapped in mist, soaked in rain, but he would 
not wait. ' ' I see no other way, ' ' he wrote to Jeffer- 
son on the nth, "if by Monday next the weather 
does not change, but of making a rough draft as 
accurate as may be obtained by viewing the 
ground in riding over it on horseback, as I have 
already done yesterday through the rain, to ob- 
tain a knowledge of the whole. ... As far as 
I was able to judge through a thick fog, I passed 
on many spots which appeared to me really beau- 
tiful, and which seem to dispute with each other 
[which] commands."^ 

When he could see the place to better advan- 
tage, his admiration knew no bounds. In an un- 

' W. B. Bryan's History of the National Capital, 1914, p. 127. 
^Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 151. 



166 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

published letter to Hamilton he says: "Now, 
when you may probably have heard that I am 
finally charged with delineating a plan for the 
city, I feel a sort of embarrassment how to speak 
to you as advantageously as I really think of the 
situation determined upon; for, as there is no 
doubt, I must feel highly interested in the suc- 
cess of the undertaking, I become apprehensive 
of being charged with partiality when I assure 
you that no position in America can be more 
susceptible of grand improvement than that be- 
tween the eastern branch of the Potomac and 
Georgetown."^ 

A few weeks later L' Enfant was doing the 
honors of the spot to a brother artist, the painter 
Trumbull, just back from Yorktown, where he 
had been sketching in view of his big picture of 
the surrendering of Cornwallis, and who wrote in 
his autobiography: "Then to Georgetown, where 
I found Major L'Enfant drawing his plan of the 
city of Washington; rode with him over the 
ground on which the city has since been built. 
Where th e Capitol now st ands was th en a thick 
'wood/^' '(May, 1791.) 

Another visitor of note came in the same year, 
namely the French minister, a former companion 
in arms of Lafayette and of L'Enfant himself, 
Temant, back from a three days' stay at Mount 

^ April 8, 1791. Hamilton Papers, vol. XI, Library of Congress. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 167 

Vernon, and who gave his government an account 
of what he had observed: "I would not leave 
Georgetown without having seen the ground des- 
tined for the federal city. The position seemed 
to me a most interesting one from every point of 
view. The French engineer who has already 
traced the streets, is busy preparing a detailed 
plan. . . . The President shows the greatest in- 
terest in this new Salente, which is to bear his 
name." ^ 

The city, L'Enfant thought, must be great, 
beautiful, and soon peopled, drawn "on that grand y^ 
scale on which it ought to be planned";^ meant 
to absorb "Georgetown itself, whose name will 
before long be suppressed, and its whole district 
become a part of the cession."^ It must be 
quickly filled with inhabitants, because this will 
strengthen the Union: "I earnestly wish all that 
the Eastern States can spare may come this way, 
and believe it would answer as good a purpose 
as that of their emigration to the West. It would 
deface that line of markation which will ever 

^September 30, October 24, 1791. Correspondence oj the French 
Ministers, ed. F. J. Turner, 1904, p. 62. "Salente," the ideal city, 
in Fenelon's Telemaque. During the War of Independence Chevalier 
Jean de Ternant had served as a volunteer officer in the American 
army. He was at Valley Forge, at Charleston, took part under 
Greene in the Southern campaign and was promoted a colonel by a 
vote of Congress. 

^ To Jefferson, March 11, 1791. 

'To Hamilton, April 8, 1791. 



168 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

oppose the South against the East, for when ob- 
jects are seen at a distance the idea we form of 
them is apt to mislead us . . . and we fancy- 
monstrous that object which, from a nearer view, 
would charm us. . , . Hence arises a natural 
though unwarrantable prejudice of nations against 
nations, of States against States, and so down to 
individuals, who often mistrust one another for 
want of being sufficiently acquainted with each 
other." 1 

The city must be beautiful, due advantage 
being taken of the hilly nature of the spot for 
grand or lovely prospects, and of its water re- 
sources for handsome fountains and cascades: 
"five grand fountains intended, with a constant 
.spout of water — a grand cascade" at the foot of 
Capitol Hill,^ etc., a part of the plan which was, 
unluckily, left in abeyance. Some had spoken of 
a plain rectangular plan, "a regular assemblage 
of houses laid out in squares, and forming streets 
all parallel and uniform." This might be good 
enough, L'Enfant declared, "on a well-level plain, 
where, no surrounding object being interesting, 
it becomes indifferent which way the opening 
street may be directed." But the case is quite 
different with the future federal city: "Such 

' Same letter to Hamilton. 

^ L'Enfant's Observations Explanatory of the Plan, inscribed on the 
plan itself. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 169 

regular plans, however answerable they may ap- 
pear on paper . . . become at last tiresome and 
insipid, and it could never be, in its origin, but 
a mean continence of some cool imagination want- 
ing a sense of the really grand and truly beauti- 
ful, only to be met with where nature contributes 
with art and diversifies the objects."^ We may 
imagine what his feelings would be if he saw, in 
our days, the steam-shovel busy around the city, 
dumping as many hills as possible into as many 
^yales, and securing a maximum platitude. 

But the city must be more than that; besides 
being beautiful, healthy, commodious, it should 
be full of sentiment, of associations, of ideas; 
everything in it must be evocative and have a 
meaning and a "raison d'etre." Rarely was a 
brain more busy than that of L'Enfant during the 
first half of the year 1791. Surveying the ground, 
mapping out the district, sketching the chief 
buildings of the model city that was to be,^ he 
presented three reports to Washington, the first, 
giving only his general ideas, before the end of 

^ First report to the President, March 26, 1791. 

- For he was depended upon for that, too: "M. L'Enfant," Ter- 
nant wrote, "aura aussi la direction des batimens que le Congres se 
propose d'y faire elever." September 30, 1791. See also the docu- 
ments quoted by W. B. Bryan, History of the National Capital, 1914, 
p. 165, note. L'Enfant actually made drawings for the Capitol, the 
President's house, the bridges, the market, etc., which he complained 
later the commissioners to have unjustly appropriated. Records of 
the Columbia Historical Society, II, 140. 



170 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

March, the second in June, the last in August, 
the two latter accompanied with plans, the last 
of which being the one which was followed in 
the building of the city. 

^ - By the amplitude of its scope, the logic of the 
arrangements, the breadth of the streets and 
avenues, the beauty of the prospects cleverly 
taken into account, the quantity of ground set 
apart for gardens and parks, the display of waters, 

^_the plan was a unique monument. The selection 
'of the place for what we call the Capitol and the 
. I White House, which were then called the Federal 
^ House and the Palace for the President, near 
which the ministerial departments were to be 
built, had been the result of a good deal of think- 
ing and comparing. "After much menutial [sic] 
search for an eligible situation, prompted, as I 
may say, from a fear of being prejudiced in favor 
of a first opinion, I could discover no one so ad- 
vantageously to greet the congressional building 
as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights, 
which stand as a pedestal waiting for a monu- 
ment. . . . Some might, perhaps, require less 
labor to be made agreeable, but, after all assistance 
of arts, none ever would be made so grand." On 
that very pedestal now rises the Capitol of the 
United States. 
---=- ^s for the "Presidential Palace," L'Enfant made 
his choice with the object, he says, of "adding to 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 171 

the sumptuousness of a palace the convenience 
of a house and the agreeableness of a country 
seat," which are the three main quaHties actually 
combined in the present White House. He se- 
lected a spot which Washington had himself 
noticed as a convenient one, at some distance 
from Congress, it is true, but that would not matter 
much, L'Enfant thought, with his old-world no- 
tions of etiquette, for "no message to nor from 
the President is to be made without a sort of 
de^orum^which will doubtless point out the pro- 
priety of committee waiting on him in carriage, 
should his palace be even contiguous to Congress." 
Since it was a question of driving, it little mat- 
tered whether the drive was to be a little more 
or less long. 

For different reasons President Washington ap- 
proved of that distance ; major e longinquo amicitia, 
he apparently thought. "Where and how," he 
once wrote to Alexander White, "the houses for 
the President and other public officers may be 
fixed is to me as an individual a matter of moon- 
shine, but . . . the daily intercourse which the 
secretaries of the departments must have with 
the President would render a distant situation 
extremely inconvenient to them; and not much 
less so would one be close to the Capitol, for it was 
the universal complaint of them all, that while 
the legislature was in session they could do little 



172 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

or no business, so much were they interrupted by 
the individual visits of members (in office hours) 
and by calls for papers. Many of them have de- 
clared to me that they have often been obliged 
to go home and deny themselves in order to 
transact the current business."* In that respect, 
carriage or no carriage, distance would have its 
merits. 

L' Enfant 's letters and the notes accompanying 
his plans show that everything in the future city 
had been devised, indeed, with an intention: 
ever-flowing fountains and a cascade for health 
and beauty; an avenue of noble buildings, lead- 
ing from the Capitol to the Presidential House, 
and increasing the dignified appearance of both: 
"The grand avenue," he wrote, "connecting both 
the Palace and the Federal House will be most 
magnificent and most convenient," with a num- 
ber of handsome monuments, a very character- 
istic one being a temple for national semireligious 
celebrations, "such as public prayer, thanks- 
givings, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to 
the special use of no particular sect or denomi- 
nation, but equally opened to all." It would also 
be a pantheon for the illustrious dead, "as may 
hereafter be decreed by the voice of a grateful 
nation." A column, as yet never built, was "to 
be erected to celebrate the first rise of a navy, 

' March 25, 1798. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 173 

and to stand a ready monument to consecrate 
its progress and achievements." The squares 
were to be allotted, one to each of the States 
forming the Union: "The centre of each square 
I will admit of statues, columns, obelisks, or any 
I other ornaments ... to perpetuate not only the 
\ memory of such individuals whose counsels or 
I military achievements were conspicuous in giving 
* liberty and independence to this country, but also 
those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy 
of general imitation, to invite the youth of suc- 
ceeding generations to tread in the paths of those 
sages or heroes whom their country has thought 
proper to celebrate." This was a way, L'Enfant 
considered, of fortifying the Union and of giving 
to the very city that educational value to which 
he attached so much importance. 

Chief among those patriotic objects was to be, 
at some distance north of the place where the 
Washington monument now rises, "the equestrian 
figure of George Washington, a monument voted 
in 1783 by the late Continental Congress." And 
L'Enfant must certainly have hoped that the 
author would be his illustrious compatriot, the 
^sculptor Houdon, on whose behalf we have seen 
him writing to Congress, in 1785, as to the prob- 
•able cost. 

Distant views and prospects were, of course, 
to be used to the best advantage: "Attention has 




174 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

been paid to the passing of those leading avenues 
over the most favorable ground for prospect and 
convenience." \ But, above all, L'Enfant was per- 
sistent in his request that, on no account, the 
grandeur of his conception be in any way cur- 
tailed: it was to remain commensurate with the 
greatness of the United States of future times. 
The plan "must leave to posterity a grand idea 
of the patriotic interest which promoted it." ^ 
He foresaw much opposition to some of his ideas, 
but besought the President to stand by him, and 
especially to prevent any dwarfing of his views: 
"I remain assured you will conceive it essential 
to pursue with dignity the operation of an under- 
taking of a magnitude so worthy of the concern 
of a grand empire . . . over whose progress the 
eyes of every other nation, enyying the oppor- 
tunity denied them, will stand judge." ^ 

To make a man of that temper and enthusiasm, 
having a reason for each of his propositions, ac- 
cept hints and change his mind was almost an 
impossibility. In vain did Jefferson object "to 
the obligation to build the houses at a given dis- 
tance from the street. ... It produces a dis- 
gusting monotony; all persons make this com- 
plaint against Philadelphia." In the same record 
of his views, however, and much more to his credit, 

' L'Enfant's Observations Explanatory of the Plan, inscribed on it. 
^ Conclusion of his third report. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 175 

Washington's secretary of state is seen foreseeing 
the sky-scraper and its dangers: "In Paris it is 
forbidden to build a house beyond a given height, 
and it is admitted to be a good restriction. It 
keeps down the price of grounds, keeps the houses 
low and convenient, and the streets light and airy. 
Fires are much more manageable when houses 
are low,"^ as was only too well evidenced since 
in the fires at Chicago, Baltimore, and San Fran- 
cisco. 

As for the President himself, he had well- deter- 
mined, practical ideas on some points, such as the 
befitting distance between the places of abode 
of Congress and of the chief of the state, and, 
what was of more import, the necessarily large 
extent of the ground to be reserved for the build- 
ing of the future capital. ^ On the rest, with his 
, habit of trusting those who knew, he seems to 

' "Opinion on Capital," November 29, 1790. Writings, ed. Ford, 
V, 253.^ 

' Which agreed perfectly with L'Enfant's constant desire to ever 
do things "en grand." Washington writes to him that, "although 
it may not be imtnediately wanting," a large tract of ground must be 
reserved. The lands to be set apart, "in my opinion are those be- 
tween Rock Creek, the Potowmac River, and the Eastern Branch, 
and as far up the latter as the turn of the channel above Evens's 
point; thence including the flat back of Jenkins's height; thence 
to the road leading from Georgetown to Bladensburg as far easterly 
along the same as to include the Branch which runs across it, some- 
where near the exterior of the Georgetown Session. Thence in a 
proper direction to Rock Creek at or above the ford, according to 
the situation of ground." Mount Vernon, April 4, 1791, Wash- 
ington's manuscript Letter Book, vol. XI, Library of Congress. 



176 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

have left free rein to L' Enfant. Submitting to 
him certain suggestions, some from Jefferson, he 
allows him to use them or not, as he pleases, 
and he personally seems to incline toward not: 
"Sir, although I do not conceive that you will 
derive any material advantage from an examina- 
tion of the inclosed papers, yet, as they have been 
drawn under different circumstances and by differ- 
ent persons, they may be compared with your own 
ideas of a proper plan for the federal city. . . . 
The rough sketch by Mr. Jefferson was done 
under an idea that no offer worthy of considera- 
tion would come from the landholders in the 
vicinity of Carrollsburgh, from the backwardness 
which appeared in them, and therefore was ac- 
commodated to the grounds about Georgetown."^ 
Criticism of L' Enfant 's plan turned out to be 
insignificant, and the approbation general. "The 
work of Major L'Enfant, which is greatly admired, 
will show," Washington said, "that he had many 
objects to attend to and to combine, not on paper 
merely, but to make them correspond with the 
actual circumstances of the ground. "^ Jefferson, 
who had the good taste not to stick to his own 
former suggestions, was sending, a little later, 
copies of the plan to Gouverneur Morris, then 
minister to France, for him to exhibit in various 

1 Same letter. 

*To the Commissioners, December i8, 1791. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 177 

cities as a thing for the United States to be proud 
of: "I sent you by the way of London a dozen 
plans of the city of Washington in the Federal 
territory, hoping you would have them displayed 
to public view where they would be most seen by 
those descriptions of men worthy and likely to be 
attracted to it. Paris, Lyons, Rouen, and the 
seaport towns of Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, and 
Marseille would be proper places to send them 
to."i 

Three assistants had been given to L'Enfant, 
two of the Ellicot brothers (Andrew and Ben- 
jamin) and Isaac Roberdeau, the major's trustiest 
second. Three Commissioners of the District had 
been appointed, Thomas Johnson and Daniel 
Carroll, both of Maryland, and David Stuart, of 
Virginia. They notified L'Enfant, on the 9th of 
September, 1791, that a name had been selected 
for the district and the city: "We have agreed 
that the federal district shall be called 'the 
Territory of Columbia,' and the federal city 
'the City of Washington.' The title of the map 
will therefore be 'A map of the City of Washing- 
ton in the District of Columbia.'" 

For the expropriation of the ground with X 
minimum actual outlay, an ingenious system, also 
applied elsewhere, had been adopted: "The terms 
entered into by me," Washington wrote to Jeffer- 

^ Philadelphia, March 12, 1793. 



178 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

son, "on the part of the United States with the 
landowners of Georgetown and CarroUsburgh, are 
that all the land from Rock Creek along the river 
to the Eastern Branch ... is ceded to the pub- 
lic, on condition that, when the whole shall be 
surveyed and laid off as a city, which Major L'En- 
fant is now directed to do, the present proprietors 
shall retain every other lot, and for such parts 
of the land as may be taken for public use they 
shall be allowed at the rate of twenty-five pounds 
per acre, the public having the right to reserve 
such parts of the wood on the land as may be 
thought necessary to be preserved for ornament; 
the landholders to have the use and profit of all 
the grounds until the city is laid off into lots, 
which by this agreement became public property. 
Nothing is to be allowed for the ground which 
may be occupied as streets or alleys." The Presi- 
dent was confident that everybody would acquiesce 
and show good-will, "even the obstinate Mr. 
Bums."i 

But it turned out that there were other obsti- 
nate people besides Mr. Bums, L'Enfant himself 
chief among them. He had evinced from the 
first a great fear of speculators, and was at once 
at war with them. "How far," he boldly wrote 
to Hamilton, "I have contributed to overset that 
plotting business, it would not do for me to tell; 

* March 31, 1791. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 179 

besides, I am not wholly satisfied whether I would 
be thanked for by the people among whom you 
live."^ The three Commissioners had notions of 
their own, but could never bring L' Enfant to 
take into account either their persons or their 
ideas; he would acknowledge no chief except 
Washington, who, gently at first, firmly after- 
ward, sternly later, and vainly throughout, tried 
to make the major understand that he was one 
of the Commissioners' subordinates. A great re- 
ciprocal irritation, which even the President's 
painstaking diplomacy could not assuage, began 
between them from the first. Out of fear of specu- 
lators, L'Enfant wanted the sale of the lots to be 
delayed, while the Commissioners desired to make 
a beginning as soon as possible. The officer kept, 
accordingly, his plan to himself, and refused to 
have it shown to would-be purchasers. How, then, 
Washington exclaimed, could they be "induced 
to buy, to borrow an old adage, a pig in a poke'^f^ 
The major would not be persuaded, and, giving 
an early example of an unconquerable fear of 
what would now be called a "trust," he persisted 
in refusing to show his plan to any individual or 
association. He had declared beforehand, in one 
of his reports to the President, what were his views 
and how things should be delayed until the plan 

* April 8, 1 79 1. Hamilton papers, vol. XI. 
^To David Stuart, November 20, 1791. 



180 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

could be engraved, distributed all over the coun- 
try, and made known to all people at the same 
time: "A sale made previous the general plan of 
the distribution of the city is made public, and 
before the circumstance of that sale taking place 
has had time to be known through the whole 
continent, will not call a sufficient concurrence, 
and must be confined to a few individuals specu- 
lating . . . and the consequence of a low sale in 
this first instance may prove injurious to the sub- 
sequent ones by serving as precedents." He was 
afraid of the ' ' plotting of a number of certain de- 
signing men," of the forming of a "society" or- 
ganized "to engross the most of the sale and 
_master the whole business."^ 

When one of the chief landowners of the dis- 
trict, Daniel Carroll, of Duddington, a relative of 
one of the Commissioners, decided, in spite of all 
warnings, to go on with the building of a house 
across what was to be New Jersey Avenue, mat- 
ters came to a crisis. Washington tried to pacify 
L'Enfant, whose indignation knew no bounds. 
"As a similar case," he wrote to him, "cannot 
happen again (Mr. Carroll's house having been 
begun before the federal district was fixed upon), 
no precedent will be established by yielding a 
little in the present instance; and it will always 
be found sotmd policy to conciliate the good-will 

'Report to the President, August 19, 1791. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 181 

rather than provoke the enmity of any man, 
where it can be accomphshed without much diffi- 
culty, inconvenience, or loss." 

But even at the request of a leader whom he 
worshipped, L'Enfant would not be persuaded. 
With no authority from the Commissioners, he 
sent his faithful Roberdeau to raze the house to 
the ground, which was but partly done when the 
Commissioners had Roberdeau arrested. L'En- 
fant thereupon came in person with some labor- 
ers, and saw the work of destruction perfected 
(November 22). He barely escaped arrest him- 
self. Washington, who, as he wrote to Jefferson, 
was loath to lose "his services, which in my opin- 
ion would be a serious misfortune," severely re- 
monstrated now with the major. "In future I 
must strictly enjoin you to touch no man's prop- 
erty without his consent, or the previous order 
of the Commissioners," adding in kindlier tones: 
"Having the beauty and regularity of your plan 
only in view, you pursue it as if every person or 
thing were obliged to yield to it."^ 

But so they are, thought L'Enfant. For him 
the city was his city, his child, and a father has a 
right to rear his child as he pleases. Remon- 
strating went on some time. Jefferson came to 
the rescue of the President, used the fairest means, 
asked the major to dine with him "tete a tete," 

* December 2, 1791. 



182 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

so as to quietly discuss the federal city, the hour 
for the meal differing rather widely from ours: 
' ' Mr. Jefferson presents his compliments to Major 
L' Enfant, and is sorry to have been absent when 
he was so kind as to call on him, as he wishes to 
have some conversation with him on the subject 
of the federal city. He asks the favor of him to 
come and take a private dinner with him to- 
morrow at half after three, which may afford 
time and opportunity for the purpose. — Saturday 
January 7, 1792."^ Nothing resulted. Another 
landowner, Notley Young, had been found in De- 
cember building a house which had, "contrary to 
expectation, fallen into a principal street. But I 
hope," Washington wrote the Commissioners, "the 
major does not mean to proceed to the demolition 
of this also." 
~j On no point would L'Enfant yield, so that on 
March 6, 1792, Jefferson wrote to the Commis- 
sioners: "It having been found impracticable to 
employ Major L'Enfant in that degree of sub- 
ordination which was lawful and proper, he has 
been notified that his services were at an end." 

A consolation and a comfort to him was the 
immediate signing by all the landowners of the 
district, except two, of a testimonial "lamenting" 
his departure, wishing for his return, praising his 
work, "for we well know that your time and the 

' L'Enfant papers. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 183 

whole powers of your mind have been for months 
entirely devoted to the arrangements in the city 
which reflect so much honor on your taste and 
judgment."^ 

1 March 9, 1792. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 
137- 



IV 

The bright part of L' Enfant 's life was over. 
His fame was great, and appeals continued for 
some time to be made to him when important 
works were contemplated. But his same ten- 
dency to ever see things "en grand," his unyield- 
ing disposition, his increasing and almost morbid 
fear of speculators wrecked more than one of his 
undertakings. 

Almost on his leaving his work at Washington 
he was asked to draw the plans of the first manu- 
facturing city, devised as such, in the United 
States, and which is to-day one of the most im- 
portant in existence, Paterson, N. J. "Major 
L'Enfant, it is said," wrote Washington, who still 
retained a friendly feeling for him, "is perform- 
ing wonders at the new town of Paterson."^ 
The moving spirit was Hamilton, under whose 
influence had been founded the "Society for the 
Establishing Useful Maniifactures. " The chief 
point was to transform into a city a spot where 
only ten houses were in existence, and to make 
of it an industrial one by turning into use the 
Falls of the Passaic. Several letters of the major 
to Hamilton, giving an account of the work, in 

'To the Commissioners, November 30, 1792. 
184 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 185 

which faithful Roberdeau was helping, and of the 
increasing difficulties with all sorts of people, are 
preserved in the Library of Congress. After one 
year's toil, L' Enfant was once more notified that 
his services were no longer wanted. 

He is found in the same year and the following ^^^ 

one working as an engineer at Fort Mifflin, on the 
Delaware, and as an architect at a mansion in 
Philadelphia which was to surpass in magnifi- 
cence any other in the States. It had been ordered 
of him by Robert Morris, the financier of the 
Revolution, and the richest man in America.^ 
Here was, if ever, an occasion to do things "en 
grand." L' Enfant, however, did them "en plus 
grand" than even the financier had dreamed; 
improvements and afterthoughts, the use of mar- 
ble for columns and facades increased the delay 
and the expense. His being busy at Paterson had 
also been at first another cause of complaint. 
"Dear Sir," Morris beseechingly wrote him from 
Philadelphia, "I had like to have stopped my 
house for fear of wanting money; that difficulty 
being removed, it will now be stopped for want 
of Major L'Enfant."^ The roof had at last been 
put on, and one could judge of the beauty of the 
ensemble, quite remarkable, as we can see from 

* Morris had bought for it a whole block, limited on its four sides 
by Chestnut, Walnut, Seventh, and Eighth Streets. 
^ May 9, 1793. (L'Enfant papers.) 



186 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

a sketch by Birch the Elder preserved in the 
Philadelphia Library, when Morris's catastrophe 
occurred, putting an end to the work, and swallow- 
ing part, if not all, of L' Enfant 's savings.^ 

In his delight at being intrusted with the plan 
of the federal city he had never said a word about 
any remuneration, and he had not copyrighted 
his plan. At the time of his dismissal Washing- 
ton had written to the Commissioners : "The plan 
of the city having met universal applause (as far 
as my information goes), and Major L'Enfant 
having become a very discontented man, it was 
\ thought that less than from two thousand five 

hundred to three thousand dollars, would not be 
proper to offer him for his services; instead of 
this, suppose five hundred guineas and a lot in 
a good part of the city were substituted?" 

The offer was made; L'Enfant refused, with- 
out giving reasons. More and more gloomy times 
were in store for him; mishaps and disappoint- 
ments multiplied. He had laid great store on 
the selling of copies of his plan, but since he had 
not copyrighted it, no royalty on the sale was re- 

^ He seems to have tried to help the financier rather than to be 
helped by him. Ill-satisfied as he was with the house, for which 
he, apparently, never paid I'Enfant anything, Morris wrote: "But 
he lent me thirteen shares of bank stock disinterestedly, and on this 
point I feel the greatest anxiety that he should get the same number 
of shares with the dividends, for the want of which he has suffered 
great distress." Written about 1800. W. B. Bryan, History of the 
National Capital, 1914, p. 181. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 187 

served for him. He protested against this, 
against the way in which the engraving had been 
made, with grievous "errors of execution," and 
against the suppression of his name on it, "de- 
priving me of the repute of the projector." Con- 
trary, however, to the fear expressed at first by 
Washington, that out of spite he might, in his 
discontent, side with the many who disapproved 
of the vast and difficult undertaking, he remained 
loyal to it, and "there is no record of any act or 
word that tarnishes his life history with the 
blemish of disloyalty to the creation of his genius. 
He bore his honors and disappointments in hu- 
mility and poverty."^ 

Poverty was, indeed, at his door, and soon in 
his house. Haunted by the notion of his wrongs, 
some only too real, some more or less imaginary, 
he sent to Congress memoir after memoir, recall- 
ing what he had done, and what was his destitu- 
tion, the "absolute destruction of his family's 
fortune in Europe," owing to the French Revolu- 
tion, his being reduced "from a state of ease and 
content to one the most distressed and helpless," 
living as he did, upon "borrowed bread"; but he 
would not doubt of "the magnanimity and justice 
of Congress."^ 

' S. C. Busey, Pictures of the City of Washington in the Past, 1898, 
p. 108. 

^ Memoirs of 1801, 1802, 1813, in the Jefferson papers, Library of 
Congress. 



188 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

The family's fortune had been reduced, indeed, 
to a low ebb, his own lack of attention to his 
financial affairs making matters worse. His in- 
ability to properly attend to them is only too well 
evidenced by some letters from French relatives, 
showing that, while he was himself in absolute 
want, he neglected to receive the pension be- 
stowed on him by the French Government, and 
which, in spite of the Revolution, had been main- 
tained. He had also inherited from the old 
painter, his father, a small farm in Normandy, 
but had taken no steps about it, so that the 
farmer never ceased to pocket the revenues.^ 

One of these letters, which tells him of the 
death of his mother, who "died with the piety of 
an angel," shows what reports reached France as 
to the major's standing among his American 
friends: "All the persons whom I have seen and 
who know you, assured me that you enjoyed 
public esteem. This is everything in a country 
of which people praise the morals, the virtues, and 
the probity as worthy of our first ancestors."^ 

On two occasions, after many years, Congress 

^Letter from his cousin, Destouches, Paris, September 15, 1805, 
greatly exaggerating, as shown by the letter mentioned below, his 
mother's state of poverty. (L'Enfant papers.) 

* From his cousin, Mrs. Roland, nee Mallet, whose husband had 
a modest position at the Ministry of the Navy; Paris, May 5, 1806. 
The mother's furniture and silver plate was valued at 1,500 livres. 
Allusion is made to L'Enfant's deceased sister and to her "mariage 
projete avec Mr. Leclerc." (L'Enfant papers.) 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 189 

voted modest sums for L'Enfant, but they were 
at once appropriated by his creditors. He was, 
moreover, appointed, in 1812, "professor of the 
art of miHtary engineering in the Military Academy 
of the United States," a nomination which, in 
spite of the entreaties of James Monroe, then 
secretary of state, he decHned. He is found in 
September, 18 14, working at Fort Washington, 
when fifty men with spades and axes are sent 
him. 

He survived eleven years, haunting the lobbies 
of the Capitol, pacing the newly marked avenues 
of "his" city, watching its growth, deploring the 
slightest deviation from his original design, for, 
as Washington had early noticed, he was "so te- 
nacious of his plans as to conceive that they would 
be marred if they underwent any change or altera- 
tion,"^ visiting the friends he had among the 
early settlers. "Mr. W. W. Corcoran, who lately 
departed this life in the city of Washington, fiill 
of years and honor . . . had a very distinct recol- 
lection of the personal appearance of L'Enfant, 
the latter having been a frequent visitor at his 
father's house. He described him to me as a 
tall, erect man, fully six feet in height, finely pro- 
portioned, nose prominent, of military bearing, 
courtly air, and polite manners, his figure usually 
enveloped in a long overcoat and surmounted by 

*To David Stuart November 20, 1791. 



190 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

a bell-crowned hat — a man who would attract 
attention in any assembly."^ 

He ended his days, the permanent guest of the 
Digges family, in their house near Washington. 
His death occurred there in 1825, and he was 
buried in their property at the foot of a tree. 
An inventory of his "personal goods and chattels" 
showed that they consisted in three watches, 
three compasses, some books, maps, and survey- 
ing instrimients, the whole being valued at forty- 
six dollars. 

The federal city, Washington had written in 
1798 to Mrs. Sarah Fairfax, then in England, 
will be a great and beautiful one ' ' a century hence, 
if this country keeps united, and it is surely its 
policy and interest to do it." It took, indeed, a 
great many years, and for a long time doubters 
could enjoy their doubts, and jokers their jokes. 
The Duke de La Rochefoucauld- Liancourt visited 
the incipient town in 1797; he found that it pos- 
sessed one hundred and fifty houses, scattered 
here and there; the house for the President was 
ready to be covered the same year, and the only 
wing of the Capitol yet begun was to receive its 
roof the year following, both being "handsome 
buildings, in white stones very well wrought." 

1 Hugh T. Taggart, in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 
XI, 216. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 191 

But the unredeemable fault, in his eyes, was the 
very magnitude and beauty of the plan. "The 
plan," he wrote, "is fine, cleverly and grandly 
designed, but.it is its very grandeur, its magnifi- 
cence, which causes it to be nothing but a dream." 
The distance, so heartily approved of by Wash- 
ington, between the President's house and the 
Capitol, seemed to the traveller a serious objec- 
tion; the raising of five hundred houses would be 
necessary to connect the two buildings ; not one is 
in existence. ' ' If this gap is not filled, communica- 
tion will be impracticable in winter, for one can 
scarcely suppose that the United States would 
undergo the expense for pavement, footpaths, and 
lamps for such a long stretch of uninhabited 
ground."^ This wonder has, however, been 
seen. 

For a long time, for more than half the present 
duration of the city's life, deriders could deride 
to their heart's content. Few cities have ever 
been so abundantly nicknamed as Washington, 
the "wilderness city," the city "of magnificent 
distances," the "village monumental," the city, 
as reported by Jean- Jacques Ampere, the son of 
the great scientist, who visited it in 185 1, of 
"streets without houses, and of houses without 
streets." He saw in its fate "a striking proof of 
this truth that one cannot create a great city at 

1 Voyage en Amerique, VI, 122 ff. 



192 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

will." But this truth, as some others, has proved 
an untruth. 

The growth was slow, indeed, but constant, 
and when the century was over, Washington's 
prophecy and L'Enfant's foresight were justi- 
fied by the event. A city had risen, ample and 
beautiful, a proper capital for a wealthy and power- 
ful nation, one quite apart, copied on no other, 
"not one of those cities," as was remarked, in 
our days, by one of Washington's successors, Mr. 
Roosevelt, ' ' of which you can cut out a piece and 
transplant it into another, without any one per- 
ceiving that something has happened." 

Then at last came L'Enfant's day. What he 
had always expected for "his" city took place; 
what he had never expected for himself took place 
also. In January, 1902, both the "Park Com- 
mission," composed of Daniel H. Burnham, 
Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and 
F. L. Olmsted, and the Senate committee pre- 
sented their reports on the improvement and de- 
velopment of Washington; the conclusions were: 
"The original plan of the city of Washington, 
having stood the test of a century, has met uni- 
versal approval. The departures from that plan 
are to be regretted, and wherever possible, reme- 
died." It was thus resolved to revert, as much as 
circumstances allowed, and in spite of a heavy 
outlay, to several of L'Enfant's ideas, especially 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 193 

to one which he considered of greatest importance, 
and which had been kept so long in abeyance, the 
giving of its proper character to that "grand 
avenue" between the Capitol and the White 
House, meant to be "most magnificent and most 
convenient." It is now going to be both. 

As for L' Enfant himself, one more appropria- 
tion, this time not to go to his creditors, was 
voted by Congress on account of the major, and 
it was resolved that his ashes, the place of which 
continued to be marked only by a tree, should be 
removed to Arlington National Cemetery, to lie 
in that ever-growing army of the dead, former 
members of the regiments of that Republic for 
which he had fought and bled. His remains were 
brought to what had been "Jenkins's Hill," and 
placed imder the great dome of the Capitol. In 
the presence of the chief of the state. President 
Taft, of representatives of Congress, the Supreme 
Court, the Society of the Cincinnati, and other 
patriotic and artistic societies, and of a vast 
crowd, on the 28th of April, 1909, orations were 
delivered by the Vice-President of the United 
States, James Sherman, and by the Chief Com- 
missioner of the District, Henry B. McFarland, 
the latter amply making up, by his friendly and 
eloquent address, for the long-forgotten troubles 
of his predecessors with L'Enfant. The Vice- 
President courteously concluded thus : "And turn- 



194 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 

ing to you, Mr. Ambassador ... I express the 
hope that the friendship between our nations, 
which has existed for more than a century, will 
be but intensified as time passes, and that we will 
in the future join hands in advancing every good 
cause which an all-wise Providence intrusts to our 
care." The hearse, wrapped in the three colors 
of France and America, was accompanied to Ar- 
lington by the French naval and military attaches, 
and an escort from one of those regiments of en- 
gineers to which the major himself had belonged. 
A handsome moniiment was unveiled two years 
later by Miss E. C. Morgan, the great-grand- 
daughter of William Digges, who had befriended 
L'Enfant in his last days, the chief speeches being 
delivered by President Taft, and by the secretary 
of state, Elihu Root.^ "Few men," Mr. Root said, 
' ' can afford to wait a hundred years to be remem- 
bered. It is not a change in L'Enfant that brings 
us here. It is we who have changed, who have 
just become able to appreciate his work. And 
our tribute to him should be to continue his work." 
The monument, by W. W. Bosworth, who, like 
L'Enfant had received in Paris his artistic educa- 
\, tion, is in the shape of a table, on which has been 

engraved a facsimile of the original plan of the 
city by the French soldier-artist. Fromi the slope 
where it has been raised can be seen, on the other 

1 May 22, 1911. 



L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 195 

side of the river, the ceaselessly growing federal 
capital, called Washington, "a revered name," 
another French officer, the Chevalier de Chastel- 
lux, had written, when visiting, in 1782, another 
and earlier town of the same name in Connecticut, 
"a revered name, whose memory will undoubtedly 
last longer than the very city called upon to per- 
petuate it." 



Ill 

WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 



WASHINGTON'S acquaintance with 
things French began early and was of 
a mixed nature. As a pupil of the 
French Huguenot Maryes, who kept a school at 
Fredericksburg, and did not teach him French/ 
we find him carefully transcribing, in his elegant 
youthful hand, those famous "Rules of Civility 
and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversa- 
tion," which have recently been proved to be 
French. Whether this French teaching given 
him by a Frenchman engraved itself in his mind 
or happened to match his natural disposition, or 
both, certain it is that he lived up to the best 
among those maxims, those, for example, and 
they are remarkably numerous, that deprecate 

^ He kept all his life a feeling that his early education had been in- 
complete. Strongly advised by David Humphreys to write an ac- 
count of the great events in which he had taken part, he answered 
that he would not, on account of a lack of leisure, and a "conscious- 
ness of a defective education." July 25, 1785. When Lafayette 
was beseeching him to visit France some day, he answered: "Re- 
member, my good friend, that I am unacquainted with your language, 
that I am too far advanced in years to acquire a knowledge of it." 
September 30, 1779. Franklin added later his entreaties to those 
of Lafayette; see Washington's answer, October 11, 1780. 

199 



200 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

jokes and railing at the expense of others, or 
those of a noble import advising the young man 
to be "no flatterer," to "show no sign of choler 
in reproving, but to do it with sweetness and 
mildness," those prescribing that his "recreations 
be manful, not sinful," and giving him this advice 
of supreme importance, which Washington ob- 
served throughout life: "Labor to keep alive in 
your breast that Httle spark of celestial fire 
called conscience." 

Another chance that Washington had to be- 
come acquainted with things French was through 
his reading, and was less favorable to them. An 
early note in his hand informs us that, about the 
year 1748, he, being then sixteen, had, "in the 
Spectator, read to No. 143." All those numbers 
had been written by Steele and Addison at a 
period of French wars, at the moment when we 
were fighting "Monsieur Malbrouk." Not a 
portrait of the French in those numbers that is 
not a caricature; they are a "ludicrous nation"; 
their women are "fantastical," their men "vain 
and lively," their fashions ridiculous; not even 
their wines find grace in the eyes of Steele, who 
could plead, it is true, that he was not without 
experience on the subject, and who declares that 
this "plaguy French claret" is greatly inferior 
to "a bottle or two of good, solid, edifying port." 

Washington was soon to learn more of French 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 201 

people, and was to find that they were something 
else than mere ludicrous and lively puppets. 

A soldier bom, with all that is necessary to 
prove a good one and to become an apt leader, 
having, as he himself wrote, "resolution to face 
what any man durst. "^ Washington rose rapidly 
in the ranks, becoming a colonel in 1754, at the 
age of twenty-two. He was three times sent, in 
his younger days, to observe, and check if he could, 
the progress of his future allies, in the Ohio and 
Monongahela Valleys. His journal and letters 
show him animated toward them with the spirit 
befitting a loyal subject of George H, none of his 
judgments on them being spoiled by any undue 
leniency. 

On the first occasion he was simply ordered to 
hand to the commander of a French fort a letter 
from the governor of Virginia, and to ask him to 
withdraw as having "invaded the King of Great 
Britain's territory." To which the Frenchman, 
an old officer and Knight of Saint Louis, Mr. de 
Saint-Pierre, who shortly before had been leading 
an exploration in the extreme West, toward the 
Rockies,^ politely but firmly declined to assent, 

* " For my own part I can answer I have a constitution hardy 
enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials and, I flat- 
ter myself, resolution to face what any man durst." To Governor 
Dinwiddle, May 29, 1754. 

2 In continuation of the La Verendrie's (father and sons) bold at- 
tempt to reach the great Western sea, a token of which, a leaden 



202 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

writing back to the governor : "I am here by the 
orders of my general, and I entreat you, sir, not 
to doubt but that I shall try to conform myself 
to them with all the exactness and resolution 
which must be expected from a good officer." 
He has "much the air of a soldier," Washington 
wrote of him. 

Mr. de Saint-Pierre added, on his part, a word 
on the bearer of Governor Dinwiddle's message, 
who was to be the bearer also of his answer, and 
in this we have the first French comment on 
Washington's personality: "I made it my par- 
ticular care to receive Mr. Washington with a 
distinction suitable to your dignity as- well as to 
his own personal merit. — From the Fort on the 
Riviere-aux-Boeufs, December 15, 1753." Hav- 
ing received plentiful supplies as a gift from the 
French, but entertaining the worst misgivings as 
to their "artifices," the young officer began his 
return journey, during which, in spite of all 
trouble, he managed to pay a visit to Queen 
Aliquippa: " I made her a present," he wrote, 
" of a match-coat and a bottle of rum, whiclj latter 
was thought much the best present of the two." 
On the i6th of January, 1754, he was back at 
Williamsburg, handed to the governor Mr. de Saint 

tablet with a French and Latin inscription and the arms of France, 
was recently discovered near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. See South 
Dakota Historical Collections, 19 14, pp. 89 ff. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 203 

Pierre's negative answer, and printed an account 
of his journey.^ 

The second expedition, a military one, was 
marked next year by the sad and famous Jiimon- 
ville incident and by the surrendering, to the 
brother of dead Jumonville, of Fort Necessity, 
where the subjects of King George and their 
youthful colonel, after a fight lasting from eleven 
in the morning till eight in the evening, had to 
capitulate, being permitted, however, by the 
French to withdraw with "full military honors, 
drtmi-beating, and taking with them one small 
piece of ordnance. " (July 3, 1754.) The fort and 
the rest of the artillery remained in the hands of 
the captors, as well as part of that diary which, 
although with interruptions, Washington was fond 
of keeping, whenever he could, his last entry being 
dated Friday, December 13, 1799, the day before 
his death. The part found at Fort Necessity — • 
March 31 to June 27, 1754 — was sent to Paris, 
translated into French, printed in 1756 by the 
royal government, ^ and the text given in Wash- 
ington's writings is only a retranslation from 



^ The Journal of Major George Washington, sent by the Hon. Robert 
Dinwiddle, Esq., his Majesty's Lieut. -Governor and Commander in 
chief of Virginia, to the commandant of the French forces in Ohio. 
Williamsburg, 1754. 

^ Memoire contenant le precis des faits avec leurs pieces jiistificatives 
pour servir de response aux observations envoyees par les ministres 
d'Angleterre dans les cours d' Europe, Paris, 1756. 



204 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

the French, the original EngHsh not having been 
preserved. 

The third occasion was the terrible campaign 
of 1755, which ended in Braddock's death and the 
defeat of the English regulars on the Mononga- 
hela, not far from the newly built Fort Duquesne, 
later Pittsburgh (July 9). Contrary to expecta- 
tion^ (there being "about three hundred French 
and Indians," wrote Washington; "our nimibers 
consisted of about thirteen himdred well-armed 
men, chiefly regulars"^), the French won the 
day, nearly doing to death their future com- 
mander-in-chief. A rumor was even spread that 
he had actually succumbed after composing a 
"dying speech," and Washington had to write 
to his brother John to assure him that he had had 
as yet no occasion for such a composition, though 
very near having had it: "By the all-power- 
ful dispensation of Providence, I have been pro- 
tected beyond all human probability and expecta- 
tion; for I had four bullets through my coat, 
and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, 
although death was levelling my companions on 
every side of me. We have been most scandal- 
ously beaten."^ 

^ "As to any danger from the enemy, I look upon it as trifling." 
Washington to his brother, John, May 14, 1755. 

2 Washington to Dinwiddie, July 18, 1755. 

'Same date. Washington revisited the region in October, 1770, 
but the entries in his journal contain no allusion to previous events : 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 205 

By an irony of fate, in this expedition against 
the French, in which George Washington acted 
as aide-de-camp to the EngHsh general, the means 
of transportation had been supphed by Post- 
master Benjamin FrankHn. 

The French were indubitably different from 
the airy fops of Addison's Spectator, but they 
were as far as ever from commanding young 
Washington's sympathy. It was part of his 
loyalism to hate them and to interpret for the 
worst anything they could do or say. The 
master of an ampler vocabulary than he is some- 
times credited with, we find him writing to Rich- 
ard Washington, in 1757, that the means by 
which the French maintain themselves in the 
Ohio Valley are—' ' heUish. ' ' 1 

"We lodged [at Fort Pitt] in what is called the town, about three 
hundred yards from the fort. . . . These houses, which are built 
of logs, and ranged into streets, are on the Monongahela, and, I sup- 
pose, may be twenty in number, and inhabited by Indian traders, 
etc. The fort is built on the point between the rivers Allegheny 
and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne." 
^ To Richard Washington, merchant, London; from Fort Loudoun, 
April 15, 1757. The same letter enlightens us as to Washington's 
tastes concerning things material. He orders "sundry things" to 
be sent him from London, adding: "Whatever goods you may send 
me where the prices are not absolutely limited, you will let them be 
fashionable, neat and good in their several kinds." Same tastes 
shown in his letter to Robert Cary and Co., ordering a chariot "in 
the new taste, handsome, genteel, and light," painted preferably 
green, but in that he would be "governed by fashion." (June 6, 
1768.) The chariot was sent in September; it was green, "all the 
framed work of the body gilt, handsome scrawl, shields, ornamented 
with flowers all over the panels." 



206 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

A few years later the tone is greatly altered, 
not yet toward the French, but toward the 
British Government and King. In sad, solemn 
words, full already of the spirit of the Washing- 
ton of history, he warns his friend and neighbor 
George Mason, the one who was to draw the 
first Constitution of Virginia, of the great crisis 
now looming: "American freedom" is at stake; 
"it seems highly necessary that something should 
be done to avert the stroke and maintain the 
liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. 
But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose 
effectually, is the point in question. 

"That no man should scruple or hesitate a mo- 
ment to use a-ms [sic] in defense of so valuable a 
blessing, on which all the good and evil of life 
depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms, I 
would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, 
the dernier resort." ^ Absolutely firm, absolutely 
moderate, such was Washington to continue to 
the end of the impending struggle, and, indeed, 
of his days. The life of the great Washington 
was now beginning. 

1 Mount Vernon, April 5, 1765. 



II 

Some more years elapse, and when the curtain 
rises again on scenes of war, momentous changes 
have occurred. To the last hour the former 
officer of the colonial wars, now a man of forty- 
two, was still expressing the wish "that the dis- 
pute had been left to posterity to determine: but 
the crisis has arrived when we must assert our 
rights or submit to every imposition that can be 
heaped upon us, till custom and use make us 
as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule 
over with such arbitrary sway." It was hard for 
him to reconcile himself to the fact that the Eng- 
lish were really to be the enemy; he long tried to 
believe that the quarrel was not with England and 
her King, but only with the ministry and their 
troops, which he calls the " ministerial. " Writ- 
ing on the 31st of May, 1775, from Philadelphia, 
where he was attending the second Continental 
Congress, to G. W. Fairfax in England, he gave 
him an account of the clash between the "pro- 
vincials" of Massachusetts and "the ministerial 
troops: for we do not, nor can we yet prevail 
upon ourselves to call them the King's troops." * 

^ This continued until the proclamation of independence. By 
letter of March 19, 1776, Washington notified the President of Con- 

207 



208 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

The war was to be, in his eyes, a fratricidal 
one: "Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a 
brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's 
breast, and that the once happy and peaceful 
plains of America are either to be drenched 
with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alter- 
native! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his 
choice ?" 

Two weeks later the signer of this letter was 
appointed, on the proposition of John Adams, of 
Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of a new body 
of troops just entering history, and called the 
"Continental Army." ^ Braddock's former aide 
was to become the leader of a yet unborn nation, 
in an eight -year conflict with all-powerful Britain, 
mistress of the coasts, mistress of the seas. 

What that conflict was, and what the results 
have been, all the world knows. There were sad 
days and bright days; there were Valley Forge 
and Saratoga. "No man, I believe," Washington 

gress of the taking of Boston, and the retreat of the "ministerial 
army." The flag of the "insurgents" was then the British flag with 
thirteen white and red stripes, emblematic of the thirteen colonies. 
^ An appointment accepted in a characteristically modest spirit, 
as shown by his letter to his "dear Patsy," his wife, giving her the 
news, and that to Colonel Bassett, where he says: "I can answer but 
for three things, a firm belief in the justice of our cause, close atten- 
tion in the prosecution of it, and the strictest integrity. If these 
cannot supply the place of ability and experience, the cause will 
suffer, and, more than probable, my character along with it, as 
reputation derives its principal support from success." June 9, 
1775- 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 209 

wrote concerning his own fate, "had a greater 
choice of difficulties."^ 

The French had ceased by then to inspire 
Washington with disdain or animosity; he was 
beginning to render them better justice, but his 
heart was far as yet from being won. French 
volunteers had early begun to flock to the Ameri- 
can army, some of them as much an encumbrance 
as a help. "They seem to be genteel, sensible 
men," wrote Washington to Congress, in October, 
1776, "and I have no doubt of their making good 
officers as soon as they can learn so much of our 
language as to make themselves well understood." 
One of them, the commander-in-chief learned, 
was a young enthusiast who had left wife and 
child to serve the American cause as a volunteer, 
and without pay, like George Washington him- 
self. He had crossed the ocean, escaping the 
British cruisers, on a boat called La Victoire, he 
being called Lafayette. One more encumbrance, 
audibly muttered the general, who wrote to Ben- 
jamin Harrison: "What the designs of Congress 
respecting this gentleman were, and what line of 
conduct I am to pursue to comply with their 
design and his expectation, I know no more than 
the child unborn, and beg to be instructed." ^ 

"Give me a chance," pleaded Lafayette, still 

* To his brother, John, December 18, 1776. 
' August 19, 1777. 



210 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

in Philadelphia ; " I do not want to be an honorary 
soldier." He came to camp, and it was a case 
of friendship at first, or at least second, sight, 
which would need the pen of a Plutarch to be told. 
In August, Washington had been wondering what 
to do with the newcomer. On the ist of Novem- 
ber he wrote to Congress: "... Besides, he is 
sensible, discreet in his manner, has made great 
proficiency in our language, and from the dis- 
position he discovered in the battle of Brandy- 
wine possesses a large share of bravery and 
military ardor." 

Then it was that Washington had a chance to 
learn what those men really were who had lodged 
so many bullets in his coat on the occasion of 
Braddock's defeat; not at once, but by degrees 
he came to consider that one peculiar trait in 
those former enemies made them worthy of his 
friendship: their aptitude for disinterested en- 
thusiasm for a cherished idea. 

Not at once; early prejudices and associations 
had left on him too deep an imprint to be easily 
removed. He resisted longer than old Franklin, 
and with a stiff er pen than that of the Philadelphia 
sage he would note down his persisting suspicions 
and his reluctance to admit the possibility of 
generous motives inspiring the French nation's 
policy. "I have from the first," he wrote, in 1777, 
to his brother, John, "been among those few 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 211 

who never built much upon a French war. I 
never did and still do think they never meant 
more than to give us a kind of underhand assis- 
tance; that is, to supply us with arms, etc., for our 
money and trade. This may, indeed, if Great 
Britain has spirit and strength to resent it, bring 
on a war; but the declaration of it on either 
side must, I am convinced, come from the last- 
mentioned Power." It was not, however, to be so. 

Even after France alone had recognized the 
new nation, and she had actually begun war on 
England, Washington remained tinbending, his 
heart would not melt. "Hatred of England," 
he wrote, "may carry some into an excess of con- 
fidence in France. ... I am heartily disposed 
to entertain the most favorable sentiments of our 
new ally, and to cherish them in others to a reason- 
able degree. But it is a maxim founded on the 
universal experience of mankind that no nation 
is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its 
interest, and no prudent statesman or politician 
will ventiire to depart from it." ^ 

After the Declaration of Independence, envoys 
had been sent to Europe intrusted with the mis- 
sion of securing the alliance, not especially of 
France, but of all nations who might be touched 
by the fate of the struggling colonists and inclined 
to help them in their fight for liberty. Some of the 

'November 14, 1778. 



212 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

envoys were not even admitted to the capitals of 
the countries assigned to their efforts; others re- 
ceived only good words. 

Sent to Prussia, Arthur Lee, who had been 
previously refused admittance to Madrid, could 
reach the capital (June 4, 1777), but not the 
King. "There is no name," Lee wrote appeal- 
ingly to the monarch, "so highly respected among 
us as that of your Majesty. Hence there is no 
King the declaration of whose friendship would 
inspire our own people with so much courage." 
But the King would not be persuaded; he re- 
fused all help in "artillery, arms, and money," 
though, Lee wrote to the committee of foreign 
affairs, "I was well informed he had a consider- 
able simi in his treasury." Frederick would not 
relent, giving as a reason that, if he agreed, the 
result woiild be much "inconvenience" for him- 
self. He even refused to receive Lee, whom he, 
however, allowed to see his army: a mechanism 
without peer, the American envoy wrote to Wash- 
ington, but only a mechanism: 

"The Prussian army, which amounts to 220,000 
horse and foot, are disciplined by force of hourly 
exercise and caning to move with a rapidity and 
order so as to certainly exceed any troops in 
Europe." They practise each day: "Every man 
is filed off singly, and passes in review before 
different officers, who beat his limbs into the posi- 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 213 

tion they think proper, so that the man appears 
to be purely a machine in the hand of a work- 
man." ^ 

The furthest Frederick consented to go was to 
cause Lee to be assured, when he left Prussia the 
following month (July, 1777), that he would al- 
ways receive with pleasure the news of any Eng- 
lish reverse. 

To the American appeal France alone answered, 
Adsum: for what motives, has been shown above,^ 
love of liberty rather than hatred of England 
being the chief reason, and the rebellious colonies 
being popular in France not so much because they 
wanted to throw off an English yoke as because 
they wanted to throw off a yoke. 

Up to the time when Rochambeau arrived 
Washington had seen during the war more or less 
numerous specimens of the French race, but only 
isolated specimens. He had heard of what they 
were doing as soldiers and sailors, without him- 
self seeing them in action. As gentlemen and 

^To Washington, June 15, 1777. Same impression later (1785) 
on Lafayette, who saw the Prussian grand manoeuvres, and sent 
an account of them to Washington: "The Prussian army is a per- 
fectly regular piece of machinery. . . . All the situations which 
may be imagined in war, all the movements which they may cause, 
have been by constant habit so well inculcated in their heads that 
all those operations are performed almost mechanically." February 
8, 1786. Memoires, correspondance et maniiscrils du General La- 
fayette, Bruxelles, 1838, I, 204. 

2 Pp. 10 ff. 



214 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

soldiers he held them, at that date, to be fit rep- 
resentatives of a nation "old in war, very strict 
in military etiquette, and apt to take fire where 
others scarcely seem warmed." ^ He noticed, 
however, after Savannah, that with all that 
warmth they could, when put to the test, prove 
steady, level-headed, and careful of their words: 
"While," he said to General Lincoln, "I regret 
the misfortune, I feel a very sensible pleasure in 
contemplating the gallant behavior of the offi- 
cers and men of the French and American army; 
and it adds not a little to my consolation to 
learn that, instead of the mutual reproaches which 
often follow the failure of enterprises depending 
upon the co-operation of troops of different na- 
tions, their confidence in and esteem of each 
other is increased." ^ 

Concerning the French as sailors Washington 
did not conceal, however, to his intimate friends 
his misgivings. He early felt that the issue of 
the whole war and the independence of his coun- 
try might depend on an at least momentary 
domination of the sea, but felt great doubt as to 
the possibility of this goal being reached. "In 
all probabiHty," he thought, "the advantage 
will be on the side of the English. And then 
what would become of America ? We ought not 

^To General Sullivan, September, 1778. 
* December 12, 1779. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 215 

to deceive ourselves. ... It is an axiom that 
the nation which has the most extensive com- 
merce will always have the most powerful marine. 
... It is true, France in a manner created a 
fleet in a very short space, and this may mislead 
us in the judgment we form of her naval abilities. 
. . . We should consider what was done by 
France as a violent and unnatural effort of the 
government, which for want of sufficient founda- 
tion cannot continue to operate proportionable 
effects." Moreover, though "the ability of her 
present financier (Necker) has done wonders," 
France is not a rich country.^ 

When Rochambeau came with his 5,000 troops, 
on Temay's fleet, which carried numerous naval 
officers and sailors besides, Washington took, so 
to say, personal contact with France herself, and 
was no longer dependent upon his reading of 
hostile books, his souvenirs of the colonial wars, 
or his impression from acquaintanceship with sepa- 
rate individuals. The portraits in the Spectator 
could less and less be considered as portraits. 
Washington found himself among men of steady 
mind and courteous manners, noteworthy not 
only for their fighting qualities, but their sense of 
duty, their patience and endurance, their desire 
to do well. As for the troops, they observed, as 
is well known, so strict a discipline that the in- 

^ To President Reed, May 28, 1780. 



216 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

habitants, who expected nothing of the sort, 
rather the reverse, were astonished and deHghted. 

Little by Httle Washington's heart was won. 
We did not, in that war, conquer any land for 
ourselves, but we conquered Washington. For 
some time more he remained only officially ours; 
the praise bestowed by him on his allies and 
their country found place in his letters to them- 
selves, or in his reports to Congress, which were, 
in fact, public documents. At last the day came 
when, writing only for himself, in a journal 
not meant to be seen by anybody, he inscribed 
those three words: "our generous allies." That 
day, May i, 1781, Washington's heart was really 
won. 

From that moment what Washington wrote 
concerning the French, were it addressed to them- 
selves or to Congress, can be taken at its face 
value, and very pleasant reading it is to this 
day for the compatriots of those officers and 
soldiers who had the great man for their com- 
mander-in-chief — such statements as this one, 
for example, sent to Congress seven days before 
the Yorktown capitulation: "I cannot but ac- 
knowledge the infinite obligations I am under to 
his Excellency, the Count de Rochambeau, the 
Marquis de Saint-Simon, commanding the troops 
from the West Indies, the other general officers, 
and indeed the officers of every denomination in 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 217 

the French army, for the assistance which they 
afford me. The experience of many of those 
gentlemen in the business before us is of the ut- 
most advantage in the present operation. . . . 
The greatest harmony prevails between the two 
armies. They seem actuated by one spirit, that 
of supporting the honor of the allied armies." ^ 
When, in the course of the following year, the two 
armies which have never met since, were about 
to part, their leader thus summed up his impres- 
sions: "It may, I believe, with much truth be 
said that a greater harmony between two armies 
never subsisted than that which has prevailed 
between the French and Americans since the first 
junction of them last year." ^ 

By the beginning of 1783 peace and American 
independence had been practically secured. Wash- 
ington is foim.d duly solemnizing the anniversary 
of the French alliance which had rendered those 
events possible. "I intended," he says to Gen- 
eral Greene, "to have wrote you a long letter on 
sundry matters, but Major Burnet popped in 
unexpectedly at a time when I was preparing for 
the celebration of the day, and was just going to 
a review of the troops, previous to the feu de joie." 
The orders issued by him on the occasion read 
thus: "The commander-in-chief, who wishes on 

1 "Before York," October 12, 1781. 
*To Lafayette, October 20, 1782. 



218 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

the return of this auspicious day to diffuse the 
feeHngs of gratitude and pleasure as extensively 
as possible, is pleased to grant a fiill and free 
pardon to all military prisoners now in confine- 
ment." ^ 

The orderly book used by Washington is still 
in existence, and from it we learn that the parole 
given for the day was "America and France," 
and the countersigns, "United," "Forever." 

* February 6, 1783. 



Ill 

No less characteristic of Washington's senti- 
ments thereafter is the correspondence continued 
by him with a number of French people when the 
war was a thing of the past and no further help 
could be needed. With Rochambeau, with d'Es- 
taing, Chastellux, La Luzerne, then ambassador 
in London, whom he had seen with keen regret 
leave the United States,^ and, of course, with 
Lafayette, he kept up a correspondence which 
affords most pleasant reading: a friend writes to 
his friends and tells them of his feelings and ex- 
pectations. The attitude of France at the peace 
is the subject of a noble letter to La Luzerne: 
' ' The part your Excellency has acted in the cause 
of America and the great and benevolent share 
you have taken in the establishment of her inde- 
pendence are deeply impressed on my mind, and 
will not be effaced from my remembrance, or that 

* Sending him a farewell letter in which he said: "You may rest 
assured that your abilities and dispositions to serve this country 
were so well understood, and your service so properly appreciated 
that the residence of no public minister will ever be longer remembered 
or his absence more sincerely regretted. It will not be forgotten 
that you were a witness to the dangers, the sufferings, the exertions 
and the successes of the United States from the most perilous crises 
to the hour of triumph." February 7, 1788. 

219 



220 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

of the citizens of America. . . . The articles of 
the general treaty do not appear so favorable to 
France, in point of territorial acquisitions, as 
they do to the other Powers.^ But the magnani- 
mous and disinterested scale of action which that 
great nation has exhibited to the world during 
this war, and at the conclusion of peace, will 
insure to the King and nation that reputation 
which will be of more consequence to them than 
every other consideration." ^ 

Washington keeps his French friends aware of 
the progress of the coimtry and of his hopes for 
its greatness; he wants to visit the United States 
to the limit of what was then the extreme West. 
"Prompted by these actual observations," he 
writes to Chastellux, "I could not help taking a 
more contemplative and extensive view of the 
vast inland navigation of these United States 
from maps and the information of others, and 
could not but be struck with the immense diffusion 
and importance of it, and with the goodness of 
that Providence which has dealt her favors to us 
with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may 
have wisdom enough to improve them. I shall 
not rest contented till I have explored the Western 

' They merely sanctioned some territorial exchanges and restitu- 
tions on both sides in the colonies, and stipulated that the British 
agent in Dunkirk, who had been expelled at the beginning of the war, 
would not return. 

''March 29, 1783. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 221 

country and traversed those lines, or great part 
of them, which have given new bounds to a new 
empire." ^ To La Luzerne he wrote some years 
later : ' ' The United States are making great prog- 
ress toward national happiness, and if it is not 
attained here in as high a degree as human nature 
will admit of, I think we may then conclude that 
political happiness is unattainable." ^ 

That rest for which Washington had been long- 
ing ("I pant for retirement," he had written to 
Gary in June, 1782) had been granted him by 
the end of 1783, when, the definitive treaty having 
been concluded, he had resigned his commission 
in the hands of Congress, at Annapolis on the 
23d of December, "bidding an affectionate fare- 
well," he said, "to this august body under whose 
orders I have so long acted." It was at first 
difficult for him to enjoy, in his dear Mount Ver- 
non, that so-much-desired quiet life, and "to get 
the better," he wrote to General Knox, "of my 
custom of ruminating as soon as I waked in the 
morning on the business of the ensuing day, and 
of my siu-prise at finding, after revolving many 
things in my mind, that I was no longer a public 
man, nor had anything to do with public transac- 
tions." But he soon came to the thorough en- 

1 Princeton, October 12, 1783. He started for that journey the 
following autumn. 
^ September 10, 1791. 



222 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

joyment of his peaceful surroundings and happy- 
family life, writing about his new existence to 
Rochambeau and Lafayette, not without a tinge 
of melancholy, as from one whose life's work is 
a thing of the past. To the man of all men for 
whom his manly heart felt most tenderness, to 
Lafayette, it is that he wrote the beautiful 
letter of February i, 1784, unaware that his rest 
was only temporary, and that he was to become 
the first President of the country he had given 
life to: 

"At length, my dear marquis, I am become a 
private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and 
under the shadow of my own vine and my own 
fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the 
busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself 
with those tranquil enjoyments of which the sol- 
dier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman 
whose watchful days and sleepless nights are 
spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare 
of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, 
as if the globe was insufficient for us all . . . can 
have very little conception. I have not only re- 
tired from all public employments, but I am re- 
tiring within myself, and shall be able to view 
the solitary walk of private life with heartfelt 
satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined 
to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, 
being the order for my march, I will move gently 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 223 

down the stream of life until I sleep with my 
fathers." 

With Lafayette the great man unbends, he 
becomes affectionate, poetical as in the passage 
just quoted, sometimes even jocose, which was 
so rare with him. He wants Madame de La- 
fayette to come to America and visit Mount 
Vernon, saying to her: "Your own doors do not 
open to you with more readiness than mine 
would." ^ She never came, but her husband re- 
turned for a few months, the same year, and this 
was the first of his two triumphant joiimeys to 
the freed United States; it was then that he 
parted at Annapolis from his chief, never to see 
him again; a very sad parting for both, Washing- 
ton sending him from Mount Vernon, in time for 
it to reach him before he sailed, the most touching, 
perhaps, of all his letters: 

"In the moment of our separation, upon the 
road as I travelled, and every hour since, I have 
felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you 
which length of years, close connection, and your 
merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, 
when our carriages separated, whether that was 
the last sight I should ever have of you. And 
though I wished to say, no, my fears answered, 
yes. I called to mind the days of my youth and 
found they had long since fled, to return no more; 

1 Mount Vernon, April 4, 1784. 



224 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

that I was now descending the hill I had been 
fifty- two years climbing, and that, though I was 
blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short- 
lived family and might soon expect to be entombed 
in the mansion of my fathers. These thoughts 
darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the pic- 
ture, and consequently to my prospect of seeing 
you again. But I will not repine; I have had 
my day."^ 

A portrait of Lafayette, his wife, and children 
was received the following year by Washington, 
and caused him great pleasure; this, he said to 
the sender, "I consider as an invaluable present 
and shall give it the best place in my house. "^ 

He continued to the end to be Lafayette's con- 
fidant and adviser. In one of his most notable 
letters, passing judgment on the great warrior 
Frederick II and on his brother, Prince Henry, 
whom Lafayette had recently visited, he clearly 
outlined what should be his correspondent's ideal 
as to the government of men. "To be received," 
he says, "by the King of Prussia and Prince 
Henry, his brother (who as soldiers and politicians 
yield the palm to none), with such marks of 
attention and distinction, was as indicative of 
their discernment as it is of your merit. ... It 
is to be lamented, however, that great characters 

'December 8, 1784. Bayard Tuckerman, Lafayette, 1889, I, 165. 
"July 25, 1785. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 225 

are seldom without a blot. That one man should 
tyrannize over millions will always be a shade in 
that of the former, while it is pleasing to hear 
that due regards to the rights of mankind is char- 
acteristic of the latter." 

During those years of comparative rest — only 
comparative, for he had to receive innumerable 
visitors, to answer an unbelievable quantity of 
letters, because everybody wanted his counsels, 
to take part in the framing of the Constitution 
as a delegate of Virginia in 1787 — his fame went 
on increasing in France from whence tokens of 
admiration came for him of every kind, some noble, 
some simple, some high-flown, like that letter 
from the Chevalier de Lormerie, who made bold 
to ' ' present a Plan of Perpetual Peace to a general 
who is even more of a philosopher than a warrior."^ 

Besides letters, French visitors would now and 
then appear at the door of Mount Vernon. One 
did so by appointment, and even in virtue of a 
law, namely Jean Antoine Houdon, the famous 
sculptor, whose coming was the resiilt of an act 
passed by the Assembly of Virginia, prescribing 
' ' that the executive be requested to take measures 
for procuring a statue of General Washington, to 

' " Excellence, Vos vertus civiles et vos talents militaires ont donne 
k votre patrie la liberte et le bonheur; mais leur influence sur celui 
du globe entier est encore preferable a mes yeux. C'est a ce grand 
but que tend tout homme qui se sent digne d'arriver a rimmortalite," 
etc. May 28, 1789. Papers of the Continental Congress, LXXVIII, 
759, Library of Congress. 



226 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

be of the finest marble and the best workman- 
ship." 

The sculptor might be of any nationality, pro- 
vided he were the best alive. "The intention of 
the Assembly," the Governor informed Jefferson, 
then in Paris, "is that the statue should be the 
work of the most masterly hand. I shall therefore 
leave it to you to find out the best in any of the 
European states."^ Once more it was France's 
good fortune to be able to answer, Adsum. 

The "executive," Governor Harrison, not over- 
well versed in matters artistic, had thought that 
all a sculptor could need to perform his task was 
a painted portrait of the model, so he ordered one 
from Peale, which would, he thought, enable the 
artist "to finish his work in the most perfect 
manner."^ Houdon decided that he would rather 
undertake the journey, insisting only that, as he 
was the support of his father, mother, and sisters, 
his life be insured, a condition which, owing to 
the risks, was not fulfilled without difficulty. It 
finally was, however, so that we know, to a cent, 
what the life of the great sculptor was worth: it 
was worth two thousand dollars. 

Houdon came on the same ship which brought 

ijune 22, 1784. Jean Antoine Houdon, by C. H. Hart and Ed. 
Biddle, Philadelphia, 1911, p. 182. 

^ Ibid., p. 189. Peale's full-length portrait, with "a perspective 
view of York and Gloucester, and the surrender of the British army," 
price thirty guineas, reached Paris in April, 1785, and has since 
disappeared. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 227 

back Franklin after his long mission to France, 
and he reached Mount Vernon on October 2, 
1785, having been preceded by a letter, in which 
Jefferson had thus described him to Washington: 
"I have spoken of him as an artist only, but I 
can assure you also that, as a man, he is disin- 
terested, generous, candid, and panting for glory; 
in every circumstance meriting your good opin- 
ion. "^ He remained at Mount Vernon a fortnight, 
an interpreter having been provided from Alex- 
andria for the occasion. The antique costume 
with which the artist and the model had been 
threatened at one time was discarded; Wash- 
ington was represented, not as a Greek, which he 
was not, but as an American general, which he 
was, the size being "precisely that of life." Any 
one who wants to see with his eyes George Wash- 
ington, to live in his atmosphere, to receive the 
moral benefit of a great man's presence, has only 
to go to Richmond. To those who know how to 
listen the statue will know how to speak. No 
work of art in the whole United States is of 
greater worth and interest than this one, and no 
copy gives an adequate idea of the original, copies 
being further from the statue than the statue was 
from the model. One must go to Richmond. 

Unfortunately, no notes on his journey, and on 
his stay at Mount Vernon, were left by Houdon. 

^ July 10, 1785. Ibid., p. 191. 



228 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

As was usual with him, what he had to say he 
said in marble. 

Other French visitors of more or less note called 
at Mount Vernon. Popular in France, even at 
the time of their worst troubles, when failure 
seemed threatening, the United States were much 
more so now, and men wanted to go and see with 
their own eyes what was the power of liberty, and 
whether it could, as reported, transform a coun- 
try into an Eden, and cities into modem "Sa- 
lentes." The year of the alliance, 1778, Sebas- 
tien Mercier, in his De la Litter ature, had drawn 
up a picture of the French people's expectation: 
"Perhaps it is in America that the human race 
will transform itself, adopt a new and sublime 
religion, improve sciences and arts, and become 
the representative of the nations of antiquity. 
A haven of liberty, Grecian souls, all strong and 
generous souls will develop or meet there, and this 
great example given to the universe will show 
what men can do when they are of one mind and 
combine their lights and their courage." Tur- 
got, as mentioned before, had written in the same 
strain, the same year.^ 

The results of the war had increased those 
hopes; the success of the unprecedented crusade 
for liberty caused an enthusiasm which found its 
expression in verse and prose. The very year of 

* Above, p. 12. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 229 

the treaty securing independence an epic poem 
was published, written in French Alexandrine 
verse, divided into cantos, adorned with all the 
machinery of the Greek models, Jupiter and the 
gods playing their part: 

Ainsi parla des Dieux le monarque supreme 

— ^with invocations to abstract virtues: 

Fille aimable des Dieux, divine Tolerance. 

Preceding by several years Joel Barlow's own, 
this epic, due to the pen of L. de Chavannes de 
La Grandiere, appeared with ample annotations 
by the author himself, and dedicated to John 
Adams, under the title of U Amerique Delivree} 

The new Tasso, who justly foresaw the immense 
influence that the change in America would have 
on Europe, addressed, in tones of the most ardent 
admiration, Washington and Congress: 

Illustre Washington, heros dont la memoire 

Des deux mondes venges embellira I'histoire; 

Toi que la main des Dieux, en nos siecles pervers, 

Envoya consoler, etonner I'univers 

Par le rare assemblage et I'union constante 

D'un coeur pur et sans fard, d'une ame bienfaisante, 

Aux talents de Turenne, aux vertus des Catons, 

Et qui te vols plus grand que les deux Scipions, 

Jouis de ton triomphe, admire ton ouvrage. 

^ Amsterdam, 1783. The author is strongly anti-English and is 
indignant at the "guilty Anglomania" still existing in France, 



230 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Congress is a Greek Areopagus, whose members 
have Themis and Minerva for their advisers: 

Auguste Areopage, ou Minerve elle-meme 

Prononce avec Themis par I'organe supreme 

De tant de Senateurs, ornements des Etats, 

Une foule d'arrets ou tous les potentats 

Du droit des nations devraient venir apprendre 

Les principes sacres, et jusqu'ou peut s'etendre 

Le sceptre qu'en leurs mains les peuples ont commis, 

— you have cast on us "a torrent of Hght and 
shown us how to break the detestable bonds of 
tyrants." A prophetical foot-note, commenting 
on this passage, announces that "this will per- 
haps, be seen sooner than one thinks. Happy 
the sovereigns who will know how to be nothing 
but just, pacific, and benevolent." Six years 
later the French Revolution began. 

Using humble prose, but reaching a much wider 
public, Lacretelle, of the same group of thinkers 
as d'Alembert, Condorcet, and Turgot, himself 
later a member of the French Academy, was also 
writing in a strain of exultant admiration : ' ' Since 
Columbus's discovery, nothing more important 
has happened among mankind than American in- 
dependence" ; and addressing the new-born United 
States, he told them of the world's expectation 
and of their own responsibilities, so much depend- 
ing on their success or failure: "New-born Re- 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 231 

publics of America, I salute you as the hope of 
mankind, to which you open a refuge, and promise 
great and happy examples. Grow in force and 
numbers, amid our benedictions. . . . 

"In adopting a democratic regime, you pledge 
yourself to steadfast and pure morality. . . . 
But you do not give up those comforts in life, 
that splendor of society brought with them by 
riches, sciences, and arts. . . . The vicinity of 
corruption will not alter your morals; you will 
allow the vicinity, not the invasion. While per- 
mitting wealth to have its free play, you will see 
that exorbitant fortunes be dispersed, and you 
will correct the great inequality in enjoyments 
by the strictest equality in rights. . . . 

"Lawmaking peoples, never lose sight of the 
majesty of your function and of the importance 
of your task. Be nobly proud and holily enthusi- 
astic at the prospect of your destinies' vast influ- 
ence. By you the universe is held in expectation; 
fifty years from now it will have learned from you 
whether modem peoples can preserve republican 
constitutions, whether morals are compatible with 
the great progress of civilization, and whether 
America is meant to improve or to aggravate the 
fate of humanity." ^ 

' In the Mercure de France, 1785, prefacing a review of Crevecoeur's 
Letters from an American Farmer, and reproduced at the beginning of 
the French edition of the Letters, 1787. 



232 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

This sense of the responsibility of the new re- 
pubHc toward mankind of the future, and of the 
importance for all nations of its success or failure 
caused French thinkers to concern themselves 
with the problem, to express faith and admira- 
tion, but to submit also such recommendations 
as their studies of humanity's past made them 
consider of use. The Observations on the Govern- 
ment and the Laws of the United States, of modest, 
liberal, and noble-minded Abbe de Mably, are, 
for example, the outcome of such reflections.^ 

The visitor most representative of the views 
thus prevalent in the French nation, knocked at 
the gate of Mount Vernon, provided with that 
infallible open sesame,^ a letter of introduction 
from Lafayette. "This gentleman," the letter 
read, "intends to write a history of America, and 
you would, therefore, make him very happy if 

' Observations sur le gouvernement ct les loix des Etats Unis d'A tneri- 
que, Amsterdam, 1784, i2mo; in the form of letters to John Adams. 
The Constitutions under discussion are those of the original States. 
"Tandis," says Mably, "que presque toutes les nations de I'Europe 
ignorent les principes constitutifs de la societe et ne regardent les 
citoyens que comme les bestiaux d'une ferme qu'on gouveme pour 
I'avantage particulier du proprietaire, on est etonne, on est edifie 
que vos treize Republiques ayent connu a la fois la dignite de I'homme 
et soient alle puiser dans les sources de la plus sage philosophie les 
principes humains par lesquels elles veulent se gouverner." (P. 2.) 

^ Wanting, on his return to America, to make Washington's ac- 
quaintance, FrankHn's own grandson called similarly provided. 
Lafayette to Washington, warmly praising the young man, July 14, 
1785. Memoires, corres pondance et manuscrits du Geniral Lafayette, 
publics par sa Famille, Brussels, 1837, I, 201, 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 233 

you allowed him to glance at your papers. He 
seems to deserve this favor, since he loves America 
very much, writes well, and will represent things 
under their true light." ^ 

The bearer, a sincere admirer and friend of 
the new republic, and who had the advantage of 
speaking English fluently, was Brissot, so famous 
shortly after for the part he played in the French 
Revolution, then already penetrated with its prin- 
ciples, and having written, young as he was, on 
the reform of criminal laws, declared in favor 
of the emancipation of the Jews, founded a 
"Society of the Friends of the Blacks " and, what 
is more to the point, a Socieie Gallo-Americaine, 
first of its kind, for the members thereof to "ex- 
change views on the common interests of France 
and the United States." To become a member 
one had to prove "able and willing to bring to the 
notice of the others universal ideas on the happi- 
ness of man and societies, because, though its 
special and titular object be the interest of France 
and the United States, nevertheless, it fully em- 
braces in its considerations the happiness of man- 
kind."^ In which appears the vastness of hu- 
manitarian plans so fondly cherished among us — 
six years before the Reign of Terror. 

'May 25, 1788. J. P. Brissot, Correspondance et Papiers, ed. 
Perroud, Paris, 191 2, p. 192. 
* 1787. Text of the reports of the sittings. Ibid., pp. 105 ff. 



234 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

The "particular object" of the association was, 
however, to "help the two countries to better 
know each other, which can only be realized by 
bringing nearer together the French individual 
and the American individual." Books were to 
be published by the society, the first one to be 
dedicated "to the Congress of the United States 
and the friends of America in the two worlds." 
Newspapers, books, the texts of laws, the journals 
of Congress were to be imported from "free 
America." The society would "welcome Amer- 
icans whom their business should call to France, 
and whose knowledge would enable them to im- 
part useful information there"; nothing more 
natural, since the aim of the society was "the 
welfare of the two nations." Lafayette and Jef- 
ferson had been asked to join. One of the found- 
ers was Saint- Jean de Crevecoeur, already known 
by his Letters from an American Farmer, who 
when he left France to return to the United 
States was intrusted with the care of "making 
the society known to the Americans, availing 
himself of newspapers, or of other means; his 
expenses, if any, to be repaid."^ But the farmer- 
consul, very active in other matters, proved in 
this one very remiss. 

Brissot reached Boston in July, 1788, and 
foimd that America was exactly what he had ex- 

^ Ibid., pp. 114, 116, 126, 127, 136. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 235 

pected it to be: "Sanctuary of liberty," he wrote 
on landing, ' ' I salute thee ! . . . Would to heaven 
thou wert nearer Europe ; fewer friends of liberty 
would vainly bewail its absence there." The in- 
habitants, he wrote, "have an air of simplicity 
and kindness, but they are full of human dignity, 
conscious of their liberty, and seeing in all men 
their brothers and equals. ... I thought I was 
in that Salente, so attractively depicted by 
Fenelon." 

Equality is what strikes him most, as it does the 
mass of his compatriots ; this was the particularly 
American trait which, as mentioned before, was 
imported from the United States into France on 
the eve of our Revolution. 

Luxury, the visitor admits, is, of course, a 
danger; but they know it and arm against it: 
"The most respectable inhabitants of the State 
of Massachusetts have formed a society to pre- 
vent the increase of luxury" — an attempt which, 
however, never succeeded, but at Salente. 

After having seen the chief cities and paid a 
visit to Franklin, found very ill but with his 
great mind unimpaired, Brissot reached Mount 
Vernon in November, and remained there three 
days. Different from Houdon, he luckily took 
notes on the place and on the inhabitants thereof : 
"The general arrived only in the evening; he re- 
turned very tired from a tour over part of his 



236 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

domains where he was having a road traced. 
You have often heard him compared to Cin- 
cinnatus; the comparison is a just one. This 
celebrated general is now but a good farmer, ever 
busy with his farm, as he calls it, improving cul- 
tivation and building barns. He showed me one 
of enormous dimensions, just being erected from 
a plan sent him by the famous English agricul- 
turist Arthur Young, but greatly improved by 
him. . . . 

"All is simple in the house of the general. His 
table is good, without luxury ; regularity is every- 
where apparent in his domestic economy. Mrs. 
Washington has her eye on everything, and joins 
to the qualities of an excellent housekeeper the 
simple dignity which befits a woman whose hus- 
band has played a great role. She adds to it 
that amenity, those attentions toward strangers 
which lend so much sweetness to hospitality. 
The same virtues shine in her niece, so interest- 
ing, but who, unluckily, seems to be in a very 
delicate state of health." 

As for the general himself, "kindness appears 
in his looks. His eyes have no longer that lustre 
which his ojfficers noticed when he was at the head 
of his army, but they get enlivened in conversa- 
tion. . . . Good sense is the dominant trait in 
in all his answers, great discretion and diffidence 
of himself goes with it, and at the same time a 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 237 

firm and unshakable disposition when he has once 
made up his mind." 

His modesty is great : ' ' He talks of the American 
war as if he had not been the leader thereof, and 
of his victories with an indifference which strangers 
could not equal. . . . The divisions in his coun- 
try break his heart ; he feels the necessity of call- 
ing together all the friends of liberty around one 
central point, the need of imparting energy to 
the government. He is still ready to give up 
that quiet which causes his happiness. . . . He 
spoke to me of Mr. de Lafayette with emotion; 
he considers him as his child." 

Not only on agriculture and government, but 
also on manners the future President gave his 
visitor much information: "The general told me 
that a great reform was going on among his com- 
patriots ; people drank much less ; they no longer 
forced their guests to drink; it had ceased to be 
good form to send them home inebriated; those 
noisy parties at taverns so frequent in former 
times were not to be the fashion any more; dress 
was becoming simpler." 

On receiving news of the convocation of the 
French States General, Brissot, who felt that this 
was the beginning of immense changes, hastened 
back to France and published an account of his 
journey. He stated in his preface, written in 
1790, why he had undertaken it, and what lessons 



238 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

we might learn from our neighbors of over the 
sea: 

"The object of this journey has not been to 
study antique statues, or to find unknown plants, 
but to observe men who had just conquered their 
liberty : to Frenchmen free men can no longer be 
strangers. 

' ' We, too, have conquered our liberty. We have 
not to learn from Americans how to conquer it, 
but how to preserve it. This secret consists 
especially in morality. . . . What is liberty ? It 
is the most perfect state of society, a state in 
which man depends only upon the laws made by 
himself;^ and to make good ones, he must improve 
his reason; and to apply them he must again 
have recourse to his reason. . . . Morals are but 
reason applied to all the acts of life. . . . They 
are among free men what irons, whipping-posts, 
and gibbets are among peoples in slavery. . . . 
This journey will show you the wondrous effects 
of liberty on morals, on industry, and on the ameli- 
oration of men. . . . My desire has been to de- 
pict to my compatriots a people with whom it 
behooves, from every point of view, that they be- 
come intimately united." ^ 

^ " Under that name of liberty the Romans, as well as the Greeks, 
pictured to themselves a state where no one was subject save to the 
law, and where law was more powerful than men." (Bossuet.) 

2 Nouveau Voyage dans les Etals Unis de I'A merique Septentri- 
onale, Paris, 3 vols., April, 1791, but begun to be printed, as shown 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 239 

by a note to the preface, in the spring of 1790. The work greatly 
helped to make America better and very favorably known in Europe, 
for it was translated into English, German, and Dutch. While 
Brissot was returning to France (January, 1789), his brother-in-law, 
Frangois Dupont, was sailing for the United States, to settle there 
among free men and, scarcely landed, was writing to a Swiss friend 
of his, Jeanneret, who lived in Berhn, of his dehght at having left 
"a small continent hke that of Europe, partitioned among a quan- 
tity of petty sovereigns bent upon capturing each other's posses- 
sions, causing their subjects to slaughter one another, in ceaseless 
mutual fear, busy tightening their peoples' chains and impoverishing 
them — and I am now on a continent which reaches from pole to 
pole, with every kind of climate and of productions, among an in- 
dependent nation which is now devising for itself, in the midst of 
peace, the wisest of governments. We are not governed here by 
a foolish or despotic sovereign. . . . Farmers, craftsmen, merchants, 
and manufacturers are encouraged and honored; they are the true 
nobles. . . . Between the man who sells his labor and the one 
who buys it the agreement is between equals. The French are, 
however, very popular in this country." Brissot, Correspondance, 
ed. Perroud, pp. 218, 219. 



IV 

During the early stages of the French Revolu- 
tion, Washington had followed with the keenest 
sympathy and anxiety the efforts of our ances- 
tors, taking pride in the thought that the Ameri- 
can example had something to do, as it un- 
doubtedly had, with what was happening. "The 
young French nobility enrolled for the cause of 
[American] independence," wrote Talleyrand in his 
memoirs, "attached itself afterward to the prin- 
ciples it had gone to fight for." Pontgibaud, who 
remained a royalist, who hated the Revolution and 
became an emigre, observes the same fact, although 
deploring what occurred: "The officers of Count 
de Rochambeau had nothing better to do [after 
Yorktown], I believe, than to visit the country. 
When one thinks of the false ideas of government 
and philanthrophy with the virus of which these 
youths were infected in America, and which they 
were to enthusiastically propagate in France, with 
such lamentable success — since that mania for 
imitation has powerfully helped toward the Revo- 
lution, without being its unique cause — people 
will agree that all those red-heeled young philos- 
ophers had much better, for their sake and ours, 
have stayed at coiirt. . . . Each of them fan- 

240 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 241 

cied he would be called upon to play the part of 
Washington." Asked to join Lafayette and 
"his former brothers-in-arms of beyond the sea," 
he refused: "It has been justly said that in a 
revolution the difficulty lies not in doing one's 
duty, but in knowing where it is. I did mine 
because I knew where it was," and he joined the 
princes and emigrated.^ 

Of this American influence Washington was 
aware, and spoke, as may be surmised, in terms 
nearer those of Talleyrand than those of Pont- 
gibaud. "I am glad to hear," he wrote to Jeffer- 
son, "that the AssemhUe des Notables has been 
productive of good in France. . . . Indeed the 
rights of mankind, the privileges of the people, 
and the true principles of liberty seem to have been 
more generally discussed and better understood 
throughout Europe since the American Revolution 
than they were at any former period." ^ 

Few of Washington's observations are a greater 
credit to him, as a statesman, than those con- 
cerning this extraordinary upheaval. From the 
first he felt that the change would not prove a 
merely local one, but would have world-wide con- 
sequences; that, in fact, a new era was beginning 
for mankind. "A spirit for political improve- 

^ Mimoires dti [Chevalier de Pontgihaud] Comte de More, 1827, 
pp. 105, 132. Writing at that date, Lafayette's former companion 
thought that monarchy had been re-established in France forever, 

''January i, 1788. 



242 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

ments seems to be rapidly and extensively spread- 
ing through the European countries," he wrote 
to La Luzerne. "I shall rejoice in seeing the 
condition of the human race happier than ever 
it has been." But let the people at the helm be 
careful not to make "more haste than good speed 
in their innovations." ^ 

No less clearly did he foresee, long before the 
event, and when all was hope and rejoicing, that 
it was almost impossible to count upon a peace- 
ful, gradual, and bloodless development where so 
many long-established, hatred-sowing abuses had 
to be corrected. This, however, was what, as a 
friend of France, he would have liked to see, and 
even before the Revolution had really started he 
had expressed to Lafayette, in striking words, his 
wish that it might prove a "tacit" one: "If I 
were to advise, I should say that great modera- 
tion should be used on both sides. . . . Such a 
spirit seems to be awakened in the kingdom as, if 
managed with extreme prudence, may produce a 
gradual and tacit revolution, much in favor of the 
subjects." ^ 

The movement is started, the Bastile falls, and 
Lafayette sends the key thereof to his former 
chief. "It is a tribute," he wrote, "which I owe 
as a son to my adopted father, as an aide-de- 
camp to my general, as a missionary of liberty to 

>New York, April 29, 1790. -June iS, 1788. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 243 

its patriarch." Washington placed the key at 
Mount Vernon, where it is still, and returned 
thanks for this ' ' token of victory gained by liberty 
over despotism." ^ 

The beginnings were promising. The great 
leader was full of admiration, of awe, of appre- 
hension. To Gouvemeur Morris, then American 
minister to France, President Washington, as he 
now was, wrote on the 13th of October, 1789, in 
these prophetic terms: "The Revolution which 
has been effected in France is of so wonderful a 
nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact. 
If it ends as our last accounts to the ist of 
August predict, that nation will be the most 
powerful and happy in Europe ; but I fear, though 
it has gone triumphantly through the first par- 
oxysm, it is not the last it has to encounter be- 
fore matters are finally settled. In a word, the 
Revolution is of too great a magnitude to be 
effected in so short a space, and with the loss of 
so little blood. The mortification of the King, 
the intrigues of the Queen, and the discontent of 
the princes and the noblesse will foment divi- 
sions, if possible, in the National Assembly." 
The "licentiousness of the people" is not less to 
be feared. "To forbear running from one ex- 

1 March 17, 1790; August 11, 1790. The key is the one which gave 
access to the main entrance; those at the Carnavalet Museum in 
Paris opened the several towers. 



244 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

treme to the other is no easy matter; and should 
this be the case, rocks and shoals, not visible at 
present, may wreck the vessel."^ 

The grandeur and importance of the change 
fills him, in the meanwhile, with wonder. In his 
before-quoted letter of April 29, 1790, to La 
Luzerne he said: "Indeed, the whole business is 
so extraordinary in its commencement, so wonder- 
ful in its progress, and may be so stupendous in 
its consequences that I am almost lost in the con- 
templation. Of one thing, however, you may rest 
perfectly assured, that nobody is more anxious 
for the happy issue of that business than I am, 
as nobody can wish more sincerely for the pros- 
perity of the French nation than I do." To an- 
other correspondent, Mrs. Graham, he described 
"the renovation of the French Constitution," as 
"one of the most wonderful events in the history 
of mankind." So late as the 20th of October, 
1792, he was writing to Gouvemeur Morris: "We 
can only repeat the sincere wish that much hap- 
piness may arise to the French nation and to 
mankind in general out of the severe evils which 
are inseparable from so important a revolution." 

1 To this remarkable forecast of the Terror, and of the ruin of such 
great hopes, Jared Sparks, in his edition of the Writings, caused 
Washington to add a prophecy of Napoleon's rule, described as a 
"higher-toned despotism than the one which existed before." But 
this is one of the embellishments which Sparks, who prophesied d coup 
sHr, since he wrote after the events, thought he was free to introduce 
in the great man's letters. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 245 

Throughout the unparalleled crisis, the French 
friends of Washington kept him informed of 
events, of their hopes and fears. Lafayette's let- 
ters have been printed; those of Rochambeau, 
written in his own English, have not, and many 
of them are of great interest. The French gen- 
eral had early foreseen the necessity for profound 
changes, owing to abuses, to the excessive privi- 
leges of the few, the burdens of the many, the 
increasing maladministration, especially since 
Necker had been replaced by "a devil of fool 
named Calonne."^ Maybe the States General 
will provide an adequate remedy, by devising a 
constitution: "I hope very much of this General 
States to restore our finances and to consolidate a 
good constitution. "2 But he has doubts as to 
what "aristocratical men" will do. 

Himself a member of the Assembly, Rocham- 
beau considers that there are not, in reality, 
three orders — the nobles, the clergy, and the 
third estate — but two: "the privileged people and 
the unprivileged." The vote being, in accor- 
dance with law and custom, taken per estate or 
order, the two privileged ones always vote in the 
same way and can ever prevail. Rochambeau in- 
forms Washington that, as for himself, he "voted 
in favor of the equal representation of the third 

^ Paris, May 12, 1787. Washington papers, Library of Congress. 
2 Calais, April 3, 1789. 



246 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

order; your pupil Lafayette has voted for the 
same opinion, as you may beHeve it ; but we have 
here a great number of aristocratical men that 
are very interested to perpetuate the abuses." ^ 

He agrees with Washington that, in order to 
reach safe results, developments should be slowly 
evolved; but the temper of the nation has been 
wrought up, and it is, moreover, a fiery temper. 
"Do you remember, my dear general," he writes, 
"of the first repast that we have made together 
at Rod-Island ? I [made] you remark from the 
soup the difference of character of our two na- 
tions, the French in burning their throat and all 
the Americans waiting wisely [for] the time that 
it was cooled. I believe, my dear general, you 
have seen, since a year, that our nation has not 
change[d] of character. We go very fast — God 
will that we [reach] our aims." ^ 

In his moments of deepest anxiety Rochambeau 
is pleased, however, to remember "a word of the 
late King of Prussia," Frederick II, who, consid- 
ering what France was, what misfortunes and 
dangers she had encountered, and what concealed 
sources of strength were in her, once said to the 
French minister accredited to him: "I have been 
brought up in the middle of the unhappiness of 
France; my cradle was surrounded with refugee 

* Paris, July 31, 1789. 

* "Rochambeau near Vend6me," April 11, 1790, 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 247 

Protestants that, about the end of the reign of 
Louis XIV and the beginning of the regency of 
the Duo d' Orleans, told me that France was at 
the agony and could not exist three years. I 
[have] known in the course of my reign that 
France has such a temper that there [is] no bad 
minister nor bad generals [who] be able to kill it, 
and that constitution has made it rise again of 
all its crises, with strength and vigor. It wants 
no other remedy but time and keep a strict course 
of diet." ' 

Events followed their course, but, while every- 
thing else was changing in France, the feeling for 
Washington and the United States remained the 
same. The two countries felt nearer than before, 
and showed it in many ways. At the death of 
Franklin the National Assembly, on the proposal 
of Mirabeau, went into mourning for three days; 
our first Constitution, of 1791, was notified to 
the American Government: "President Washing- 
ton," the French minister informed his chief, 
"received the King's letter with the tokens of 
the greatest satisfaction; and in accordance with 
your orders a copy of the Constitution and of 
the King's letter to the National Assembly was 
given to him as well as to Mr. Jefferson." ^ Tom 

* Paris, May 12, 1787. 

^Ternant to Montmorin, Philadelphia, March 13, 1792. Corres- 
pondence of the French Ministers, ed. Turner, Washington, 1904. 



248 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Paine, though an American, or rather because 
an American, was elected by several depart- 
ments a member of the Convention, took his 
seat, but, as he knew no French, had his speeches 
translated and read for him; he played an im- 
portant part in the drafting of our second Consti- 
tution, the republican one of 1793. As a sacred 
emblem of liberty, the American flag was displayed 
in the hall where the Convention held its sittings. 
A quite extraordinary decree was rendered by 
this body in the second year of the Republic, 
"after having heard the petition of American 
citizens," deciding, and this at a time when every- 
body was liable to arrest, that "the wives of 
American citizens, whatever the place of their 
birth, should be exempted from the law on the 
arrestation of foreigners." 

The 14th of July was, in the meantime, cele- 
brated in America, just as in France, as mark- 
ing a new progress in the development of man- 
kind. Our minister, Ternant, gave Dumouriez 
a glowing account of such a celebration: "It af- 
fords me great satisfaction to inform you that, in 
spite of the news received the day before of the 
bad success of our first military operations, the 
Americans have given, on the occasion of this 
anniversary, touching signs of their attachment 
for France and proof of the interest they take in 
the success of our arms. You will see by the 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 249 

bulletins and newspapers accompanying this letter 
that the same sentiments have been manifested 
in almost all the cities which count in the Union, 
and that the 14th has been celebrated with the 
same ardor as the 4th, which is the anniversary 
of American independence." ^ 

For the person of the President French tokens 
of veneration and friendship multiplied. In the 
same year — ^year I of the Republic — the Con- 
vention had conferred on him the title of French 
citizen, as being "one of the benefactors of 
mankind." French officers had united to offer 
Mrs. Washington a dinner service, each piece 
ornamented with a star and her initials in the 
centre, and the names of the States in medal- 
lions around the border, the whole surrounded 
by a serpent biting its tail, the emblem of per- 
petuity. 

French dramatists could not wait imtil the 
great man should belong to the past to make of 
him the hero of a tragedy in Alexandrine verse: 
Vashington ou la Liberie du Nouveau Monde, par 
M. de Sauvigny, performed for the first time on 
the Theatre of the Nation (as the ' ' Comedie Fran- 
^aise" was then called), on the 13th of July, 1791, 
and in which a nameless predecessor of mine, 
"I'Ambassadeur de France," brought the play 
to a conclusion with praise of Washington, of 

^ July 28, 1792. 



250 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Franklin, of Congress, and of the whole American 
people : 

Magistrats dont I'audace etonna I'univers, 
Calmes dans la tempete et grands dans les revers, 
Vous sutes, par I'efiet d'une sage harmonic, 
Enfanter des vertus, un peuple, une patrie. ^ 

And in a kind of postcript, the author, com- 
menting on the events related in his play, ob- 
served with truth: "The great American Revo- 
lution has been the first result of one greater still 
which had taken place in the empire of opinion." 
Of any animosity against the English, the same 
comment offers no trace. 

Gloomy days succeeded radiant ones. Past 
abuses, danger from abroad, general suffering, 
passions let loose, were not conducive to that 
coolness and moderation which Washington had 
recommended from the first. Temant, had been 
succeeded as representative of France by that 
famous citizen Genet, who, in spite of his having 
some diplomatic experience gathered as Charge 
d 'Affaires in Russia, and being in a way a man of 
parts, an authority on Swedes and Finns, had his 
head turned the moment he landed, so completely, 
indeed, that it is impossible, in spite of the gravity 
of the consequences involved, not to smile when 
reading his high-flown, self-complacent, self-adver- 
tising, beaming despatches: "My journey (from 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 251 

Charleston to Philadelphia) has been an uninter- 
rupted succession of civic festivities, and my entry 
in Philadelphia a triumph for liberty. True 
Americans are at the height of joy."^ 

In his next letters he insists and gloats over 
his own matchless deeds: "The whole of America 
has risen to acknowledge in me the minister of 
the French Republic. ... I live in the midst 
of perpetual feasts; I receive addresses from all 
parts of the continent. I see with pleasure that 
my way of negotiating pleases our American 
brothers, and I am founded to believe, citizen 
minister, that my mission wiU be a fortunate 
one from every point of view. I include here- 
with American gazettes in which I have marked 
the articles concerning myself." 

Encouraged by the Anti-Federalists, who 
thought they could use him for their own pm-- 
poses, Genet shows scant respect for "old Wash- 
ington, who greatly differs from him whose name 
has been engraved by history, and who does not 
pardon me my successes"; a mere "Fayettist," he 
disdainfully calls him elsewhere. But Genet wiU 
have the better of any such opposition: "I am 
in the meantime provisioning the West Indies, I 
excite Canadians to break the British yoke, I 
arm the Kentukois, and prepare a naval expedi- 

' Philadelphia, May i8, 1793. Correspondence of the French Minis- 
ters in the United States, ed. Turner, Washington, 1904, p. 214. 



252 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

tion which will facilitate their descent on New 
Orleans." 1 

He had, in fact, armed in American waters, 
quite a fleet of corsairs, revelling in the bestowal 
on them of such names as the Sans-CuloUe, the 
Anti-George, the Patriate Genet, the Vainqueur de 
la Bastille, La Petite Democrate. 

His triumphs, his lustre, his listening to ad- 
dresses in his own honor, and reading articles 
in his own praise, his being "clasped in the arms 
of a multitude which had rushed to meet him," 
his naval and military deeds were short-lived. 
Contrary to the current belief, the too well- 
foimded indignation of "Fayettist" Washing- 
ton had nothing to do with his catastrophe. On 
receipt of the very first letter of the citizen- 
diplomat, and by return of mail, the foreign min- 
ister of the French Republic took the initiative 
and wrote him: 

"I see that you have been received by an hos- 
pitable and open-hearted people with all the mani- 
festations of friendship of which your predecessors 
had also been the recipients. . . . You have fan- 
cied, thereupon, that it belonged to you to lead 
the political actions of this people and make 
them join our cause. Availing yourself of the 
flattering statements of the Charleston authori- 
ties, you have thought fit to arm corsairs, to or- 

* May 31, June 19, 1793. Ibid., pp. 216, 217, 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 253 

ganize recruiting, to have prizes condemned, be- 
fore even having been recognized by the American 
Government, before having its assent, nay, with 
the certitude of its disapproval. You invoke 
your instructions from the 'Conseil executif of 
the Republic; but your instructions enjoin upon 
you quite the reverse: they order you to treat 
with the government, not with a portion of the 
people; to be for Congress the spokesman of the 
French Republic, and not the leader of an Ameri- 
can party." The diplomat's relations with Wash- 
ington are the opposite of what France desires: 
"You say that Washington does not pardon you 
your successes, and that he hampers your moves in 
a thousand ways. You are ordered to treat with 
the American Government; there only can you 
attain real successes; all the others are illusory 
and contrary to the interests of your country. 
Dazzled by a false popularity, you have estranged 
the only man who should represent for you the 
American people, and if your action is hampered, 
you have only yourself to blame." ^ 

While this letter was slowly crossing the ocean, 
others from Genet were on the way to France, 
written in the same beaming style. He continued 
to gloat over his successes and mercilessly to 
abuse all Federalists, those confessed partisans of 
"monocracy." 

' June 19, 1793. Ibid., p. 230. 



254 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

People were not for half-measures at Paris, in 
those terrible days. Instead of prolonging a use- 
less epistolary correspondence, the Committee of 
Public Safety rendered a decree providing that 
a commission would be sent to Philadelphia, with 
powers to disavow the "criminal conduct of 
Genet," to disarm his Sans-CuloUe and other cor- 
sairs, to revoke all consuls who had taken part in 
such armaments, and, as for Genet himself, to 
have him arrested and sent back to France. 
What such an arrest meant was made evident by 
the signatures at the foot of the decree: "Barere, 
Herault, Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Collot 
d'Herbois, Saint- Just." ^ 

Better than any one, Genet knew the meaning. 
But that same government which he had abused 
was generous and protected him. "We wanted 
his dismissal, not his punishment," said Secretary 
of State Randolph, who refused to have him ar- 
rested. Genet hastened to give up a country 
so hard to please, he thought, as that of his birth, 
became an American, and as, with all his faults, 
he was not without some merits, being welcomed 
in many families, and especially in the house of 
"General Clinton, Governor," he wrote, "of the 
State of New York, and chief of the Anti-Federal- 
ist party," he married his daughter, and died at 
Schodack, N. Y., a respected citizen and agricul- 

^ October ii, 1793. Ibid., p. 287. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 255 

turist, in 1834. His name has once more promi- 
nently appeared, and in the most honorable 
fashion, in those gazettes whose articles in his 
favor pleased him so much: a descendant of his 
has enlisted for the old coiintry during the present 
war, and has cast lustre on the name by his 
bravery. 

The last years of the former commander-in- 
chief of the American and French armies were 
saddened by difficulties, troubles, and quarrels 
with American political parties and with the 
French nation. The Jay treaty with England 
(November 19, 1794) had raised a storm: "At 
present the cry against the treaty is like that 
against a mad dog; and every one in a manner 
is running it down. . . . The string which is 
most played on, because it strikes with most 
force the popular ear, is the violation, as they 
term it, of our engagements with France."^ Anti- 
Federalists were indignant; the French not at 
all pleased, and their "captures and seizures," 
coupled with a desire to be allowed (which they 
were not) to sell their prizes in American harbors, 
increased the discontent. The opposition press 
was unspeakably virulent, and the great man 
sadly confessed he would never have believed that, 
he said, "every act of his administration would 
be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious 

'Washington to Alexander Hamilton, July 29, 1795. 



256 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

misrepresentations of them be made, by giving 
one side only of a subject, and that, too, in such 
exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely 
be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or 
even to a common pickpocket." ^ 

The time came at last for his definitive re- 
treat to Mount Vernon. He reached it a sad- 
dened, grand old man, longing to be at last an 
American farmer and nothing more, and never 
to go "beyond twenty miles" from his home. 
"To make and sell a little flour annually, to re- 
pair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for 
the security of my papers of a public nature, 
and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pur- 
suits, will constitute employment for the few years 
I have to remain on this terrestrial globe." ^ 

His desire was to continue to the end in the 
regular occupations he describes to McHenry, in 
a letter giving us the best picture we have of every- 
day life at Mount Vernon. Wondering what he 
might say that would interest a secretary of war, 
he writes: "I might tell him that I begin my di- 
urnal course with the sun; that if my hirelings 
are not at their places at that time I send them 
messages expressive of my sorrow for their in- 
disposition; that, having put these wheels in 
motion, I examine the state of things further, 

^ To Jefferson, June 6, 1796. 

"To Oliver Wolcott, May 15, 1797. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 257 

and the more they are probed, the deeper, I find, 
the wounds are which my buildings have sustained 
by an absence and neglect of eight years; by the 
time I have accomplished these matters, break- 
fast (a little after seven o'clock, about the time, 
I presume, you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry) 
is ready; that, this being over, I mount my horse 
and ride round my farms, which employs me until 
it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely 
miss seeing strange faces, come, as they say, out 
of respect for me. Pray, would not the word 
curiosity answer as well ? And how different 
this from having a few social friends at a cheerful 
board ! The usual time of sitting at table, a 
walk, and tea brings me within the dawn of 
candle-light; previous to which, if not prevented 
by company, I resolve that as soon as the glim- 
mering taper supplies the place of the great lu- 
minary, I will retire to my writing-table and 
acknowledge the letters I have received ; but when 
the lights are brought I feel tired and disin- 
clined to engage in this work, conceiving that the 
next night will do as well. The next comes and 
with it the same causes for postponement and 
effect, and so on. , . . 

"It may strike you that in this detail no men- 
tion is made of any portion of time allotted for 
reading. The remark would be just, for I have 
not looked into a book since I came home; nor 



258 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

shall I be able to do it until I have discharged 
my workmen, probably not before nights grow 
longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomes- 
day Book." ^ 

But in this calm retreat, described with a truth 
and charm almost reminding one of William 
Cowper's familiar letters, and where he was to 
spend such a small number of years, trouble, as 
previously, soon knocked at the door. It seemed 
at one time as if the former commander-in-chief 
of Franco-American armies would have to lead 
the Americans against the French. In spite of the 
preparations which he had himself to superintend, 
he refused to believe that war would really occur: 
"My mind never has been alarmed by any fears 
of a war with France." ^ But in his judgments 
of the French, as governed by the Directoire, 
Washington was gradually receding toward the 
time when he knew them only through Steele and 
Addison, and had, "in the Spectator, read to No, 

143." 

He died without knowing that the threatening 
clouds would soon be dispelled; that the next 
important event which would count in the annals 
of the United States and make their greatness 
secure would come from those same French 
people: the cession by them, unexpected and un- 

' Mount Vernon, May 29, 1797. 
*To T. Pickering, August 29, 1797. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 259 

asked-for, not of New Orleans, but of the im- 
mense territory then called Louisiana; and that, 
while his feelings toward the French had under- 
gone changes, those of the French toward him had 
remained unaltered. 

When the news came that on Saturday, 14th 
of December, 1799, the great leader had passed 
away,^ the French Republic went into mourn- 
ing; for ten days officers wore crape, flags were 
flown at half-mast, and the head of the state, 
young Bonaparte, issued an order in which he 
said: "Washington is dead. This great man 
fought tyranny. He established on a safe basis 
the liberty of his country. His memory will ever 
be dear to the French people as well as to all the 
free men of the two worlds, and especially to 
French soldiers, who, like himself and the Ameri- 
can soldiers, fight now for equality and liberty." 

An impressive and unparalleled ceremony there- 
upon took place at the Invalides, the Temple of 
Mars, as it was then called. Detachments from 



' "Ntdli flebilior quant mihi," wrote Lafayette, in learning the 
news, to Crevecoeur, who had just dedicated to Washington his 
Voyage dans la haute Pennsylvanie, adorned, by way of frontispiece, 
with a portrait of Washington, "grave d'apres le camee peint par 
Madame Brehan, a New York, en 1789." Crevecceur wanted to 
offer a copy of his book to Bonaparte. "Send it," a friend of his 
who knew the young general told him; "it is a right you have as 
an associate member of the Institute; add a letter of two or three 
lines, mentioning in it the name of Washington." St. John de CrevC' 
caur, by Robert de Crevecoeur, 1883, p. 399. 



260 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

the Paris garrison lined the aisles ; all that counted 
in the Republic was present, Bonaparte included, 
and Fontanes, the most famous orator of the day, 
delivered the funeral eulogy on the departed 
leader: "Washington's work is scarcely per- 
fected," he said, "and it is already surrounded 
by that veneration that is usually bestowed only 
on what has been consecrated by time. The 
American Revolution, of which we are contem- 
poraries, seems now consolidated forever. Wash- 
ington began it by his energy, and achieved it by 
his moderation. In rendering a public homage 
to Washington, France pays a debt due to him 
by the two worlds." 

In one of the first sentences of the oration, 
England (with whom we were at war) was courte- 
ously associated to the homage rendered by us 
to the great man: "The very nation," said Fon- 
tanes, "that recently called Washington a rebel, 
now looks upon the emancipation of America as 
one of those events consecrated by the verdict 
of centuries and of history. Such is the privilege 
of great characters." ^ 

In the centre of the nave stood the bust of 
Washington, wreathed in flags and laurels. Years 
before, in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, on 

* "Eloge funfebre de Washington, prononc6 dans le temple de Mars 
(H6tel des Invalides) le 20 pluviosc, an VIII (8 f^vrier, 1800)," in 
QLiwrcs de M. de Fontanes, reciieillies pour la premiere fois, Paris, 
1839, 2 vols., II, 147. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 261 

a spot now marked by an inscription, the flags 
taken at Yorktown had been laid at the feet of 
the President of Congress and of the minister 
from France, Gerard de Rayneval. Now Gen- 
eral Lannes, the future marshal, came forth and 
with appropriate words laid before the image of 
the former commander ninety-six flags taken from 
the enemy by the troops of republican France. 

A plan was formed thereupon, the realization 
of which troublous days did not allow, to erect 
a statue of Washington in Paris (he now has two 
there and one in Versailles, gratefully accepted 
gifts from America) , and a decree was prepared by 
Talleyrand recalling, as a motive, the similitude 
of feelings between France and that "nation 
which is sure to be one day a great nation, and 
is even now the wisest and happiest in the world, 
and which mourns for the death of the man who 
did more than any, by his courage and genius, 
to break her shackles and raise her to the rank 
of independent peoples. . . . One of the noblest 
lives which have honored mankind has just 
passed into the domain of history. . . . Wash- 
ington's fame is now imperishable; Fortune had 
consecrated his titles to it; and the posterity 
of a people which will rise later to the highest 
destinies continuously confirms and strengthens 
those titles by its very progress." 

Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Guizot, Cornelis de 



262 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Witt, Laboulaye, Joseph Fabre, many other 
French thinkers and writers, vied with each other 
in their praise and admiration throughout the 
century. Chateaubriand, who had seen the great 
man at Philadelphia in 1791, inserted in his Voy- 
age en Amerique his famous parallel between Bona- 
parte and Washington: "The republic of Wash- 
ington subsists; the empire of Bonaparte is no 
more; it came and went between the first and 
second journey of a Frenchman^ who has found a 
grateful nation where he had fought for some 
oppressed colonists. . . . The name of Wash- 
ington will spread, with liberty, from age to age; 
it will mark the beginning of a new era for man- 
kind. . . . His fame rises like one of those 
sanctuaries wherein flows a spring inexhaustible 
for the people. . . . What would be the rank 
of Bonaparte in the universe if he had added 
magnanimity to what there was heroical in him, 
and if, being at the same time Washington and 
Bonaparte, he had appointed Liberty for the 
heiress of his glory ?" 

Lamartine, receiving an Italian delegation in 
1848, asked them to hate the memory of Machia- 
velli and bless that of Washington : ' ' His name is 
the symbol of modem liberty. The name of a 
politician, the name of a conqueror is no longer 
what is wanted by the world, but the name of 

1 Lafayette's journeys to America. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 263 

the most disinterested of men, and the most de- 
voted to the people." Guizot pubHshed his note- 
worthy study on the first President of the United 
States, and the American colony in Paris, to com- 
memorate the event, had the portrait of the 
French statesman painted by Healy in 1841, and 
presented it to the city of Washington, where it 
is preserved in the National Museum. 

Publishing, during the early years of the Second 
Empire, the series of lectures he had delivered 
at the College de France during our Second 
Republic, the great Liberal, Laboulaye, who did 
so much to make America and the Americans 
popular in France, wrote in his preface: "Wash- 
ington has established a wise and well-ordered 
republic, and he has left to after-times, not the 
fatal example of crime triumphant, but a whole- 
some example of patriotism and virtue. In less 
than fifty years, ^ owing to the powerful sap of 
liberty, we have seen an empire arise, having for 
its base, not conquest, but peace and industry, 
an empire which before the end of the century 
will be the greatest state in the civilized world, 
and which, if it remains faithful to the thought of 
its founders, if ambition does not arrest the course 
of its fortune, will offer to the world the prodigious 
sight of a republic of one hundred million inhabi- 
tants, richer, happier, more brilliant than the 

* An exact justification of Lacretelle's prediction; above, p. 94. 



264 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

monarchies of the old world. All this is Wash- 
ington's work." ^ 

Nearer our time, Joseph Fabre, the well-known 
historian of Joan of Arc, wrote: "This sage was 
a wonder of reasoned enthusiasm, of thoughtful 
intrepidity, of methodical tenacity, of circumspect 
boldness, facing from abroad oppression, at home 
anarchy, both vanquished by his calm genius." "^ 

^ Histoire des Etats Unis, 3 vols.; preface dated 1855; the lectures 
had been delivered in 1849. Washington is the hero of the work, 
which is carried on only to 1789. 

^ Washington, liberateur de I'Amerique, 1882, often reprinted, dedi- 
cated: "A la memoire de Lazare Hoche, le soldat citoyen, qui 
aurait 6te notre Washington s'il eOt v6cu." 



Once more now a republic has been established 
in France, which, having, we hope, something of 
the qualities of "coolness and moderation" that 
Washington wanted us to possess, will, we trust, 
prove perpetual. It has already lasted nearly 
half a century: an unexampled phenomenon in 
the history of Europe, no other republic of such 
magnitude having thus survived in the old world 
since the fall of the Roman one, twenty centuries 
ago. 

If the great man were to come again, we enter- 
tain a fond hope that he would deem us not un- 
deserving now of the sympathies he bestowed on 
our ancestors at the period when he was living 
side by side with them. Most of the leading 
ideas followed by him throughout life are those 
which we try to put in practise. We have our 
faults, to be sure; we know them, others know 
them, too; it is not our custom to conceal them, 
far from it; may this serve as an excuse for re- 
viewing here by preference something else than 
what might occasion blame. 

That equality of chances for all, which caused 
the admiration of the early French visitors to 

265 



266 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

this country, which was one of the chief things 
for which Washington had fought, and continues 
to be to-day one of the chief attractions offered 
to the immigrant by these States, has been secured 
in the French RepubHc, too, where no privileges 
of any sort remain, the right to vote is refused to 
none, taxation is the same for all, and military 
service is expected from everybody. No principle 
had more importance in the eyes of Washington 
than that of "equal liberty." "What triumph 
for our enemies to verify their predictions!" 
Washington had written to John Jay, in a mo- 
ment of depression, when he feared that what 
Genet was to call ' ' monocracy ' ' was in the ascen- 
dant; "what triumph for the advocates of des- 
potism to find that we are unable of governing 
ourselves, and that systems founded on the 
basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and falla- 
cious." ^ 

In France, as in the United States, the unique 
source of power is the will of the people. In our 
search for the solution of the great problem which 
now confronts the world, that of the relations 
of capital and labor, we endeavor to practise the 
admirable maxim of one of our statesmen of 
to-day: "Capital must work, labor must pos- 
sess." And though we are still remote from this 
goal, yet we have travelled so far toward it that, 

^August I, 1786. 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 267 

at the present day, one out of every two electors 
in France is the possessor of his own house. ^ 

The development of instruction was one of the 
most cherished ideas of Washington, as it is now 
of his descendants. "You will agree with me in 
opinion," he said in a speech to both houses of 
Congress in 1790, "that there is nothing that can 
better deserve your patronage than the promo- 
tion of science and literature. Knowledge is in 
every country the surest basis of happiness." 
Instruction has become, under the Republic, obli- 
gatory for all in France, and is given free of cost 
to all. Not a village, not a hamlet, lost in the 
recesses of valleys or mountains, that is without 
its school. The state expenditure for primary 
instruction during the Second Empire amounted 
only to twelve million francs; the mere salary of 
school-teachers alone is now twenty times greater. 
We try to live up to the old principle : three things 
should be given free to all — air, water, knowledge : 
and so it is that at the Sorbonne, the College de 
France, in the provincial universities, all one has to 
do in order to follow the best courses of lectures is 
to push open the door. The man in the street 
may come in if he chooses, just to warm himself 
in winter or to avoid a shower in summer. Let 
him; perhaps he will listen too. 

' "It is estimated that there are more small holdings of land in 
France than in Germany, England, and Austria combined." Re- 
port of the [U. S.] Commissioner of Education, 1913, p. 714. 



268 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Very wisely, being, in many ways, very modem, 
Washington attached great importance to inven- 
tions. In a speech to Congress on January 9, 
1790, he said: "I cannot forbear intimating to you 
the expediency of giving effectual encouragement 
as well to the introduction of new and useful in- 
ventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill 
and genius in producing them at home, and of 
facilitating the intercourse between the , distant 
parts of our country by a due attention to the 
post-office and the post -roads." 

Distances having immensely increased in 
America (as well as means to cover them), these 
latter remarks are certainly still of value. With 
a much less difficult problem to solve, we believe 
that, in the matter of post-roads, and with a sys- 
tem of rural delivery coextensive with the national 
territory, we would pass muster in the presence 
of the great man. As for inventions, we hope that 
even the compatriots of Franklin, Fulton, Whit- 
ney, Horace Wells, W. T. G. Morton, Morse, Bell, 
Edison, the Wright brothers, and many more, 
would consider that our show is a creditable one, 
with Jacquard's loom, the laws of Ampere on 
electricity, Seguin's tubular boilers, Sauvage's 
screw, Niepce and Daguerre's photography, Re- 
nard and Kreb's first dirigible, Lumiere's cinemato- 
graph, Curie's radium, with the automobile, which 
is transforming our way of life (decentralizing 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 269 

overcentralized countries) as much as the railroads 
did in the last century; and, more than all, be- 
cause so beneficent to all, with the discoveries 
of Chevreul, Flourens, Claude Bernard, Laveran, 
Berthelot, and especially Pasteur. 

On the question of the preservation of natural 
resources, to which, and not too soon, so much 
attention has been paid of late, Washington had 
settled ideas; so have we, ours being somewhat 
radical, and embodying, for mines especially, the 
French principle that "what belongs to nobody 
belongs to everybody," and by everybody must 
be understood the nation. Concerning this prob- 
lem and the best way to solve it, Washington 
sent once a powerful appeal to the President of 
Congress, saying: "Would there be any impro- 
priety, do you think, sir, in reserving for special 
sale all mines, minerals, and salt springs, in the 
general grants of land belonging to the United 
States ? The public, instead of the few knowing 
ones, might in this case receive the benefits which 
would result from the sale of them, without in- 
fringing any rule of justice that is known to me." ^ 

^To Richard H. Lee, December 14, 1784. On French exertions 
in that line, Consul-General Skinner wrote: "If correspondents 
could penetrate, as the writer has done, the almost inaccessible 
mountain villages of this country, and there discover the enthusiastic 
French forester at work, applying scientific methods to a work 
which can not come to complete fruition before two or three hundred 
years, they would retire full of admiration and surprise and carry the 
lesson back to the United States." Daily Consular Reports, Novem- 
ber 2, 1907. 



270 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

One of the most memorable and striking things 
done by the French RepubUe is the building of 
a vast colonial empire, giving access to undevel- 
oped, sometimes, as in Dahomey, barbaric and 
sanguinary races, still indiilging in human sacri- 
fices. Washington has laid down the rule of what 
should be done with respect to primitive races. 
"The basis of our proceedings with the Indian 
natives," he wrote to Lafayette, "has been and 
shall be justice, during the period in which I 
have anything to do with the administration of 
this government. Our negotiations and transac- 
tions, though many of them are on a small scale 
as to the objects, ought to be governed by the 
immutable principles of equality." And address- 
ing the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, John 
Carroll, he again said: "The most effectual means 
of securing the permanent attachment of our 
savage neighbors is to convince them that we 
are just." 

There is nothing we are ourselves more sincerely 
convinced of than that such principles are the 
right ones and should prevail. That we did not 
lose sight of them in the building of our colonial 
empire its very vastness testifies; using opposite 
means, with so many other tasks to attend to, 
we should have failed. The number of people 
living under the French flag is about one hundred 
million now. Judging from the testimony of 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 271 

independent witnesses,^ it seems that, on this, too, 
we have acted in accordance with the views of 
the former commander-in-chief, who had written 
to Lafayette on August 15, 1786:" Let me ask you, 
my dear marquis, in such an enlightened, in such 
a Hberal age, how is it possible that the great 
maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay 
an annual tribute to the little piratical states of 
Barbary ? Would to Heaven we had a navy able 
to reform those enemies to mankind or crush 
them into non-existence." The "reform" was 
begun by Decatur in 18 15, and perfected by 
Bourmont in 1830. 

On one point Washington was very positive; 
this leader of men, this warrior, this winner of 
battles, loathed war. He wanted, of course, his 
nation, as we want ours, never to be without a 
military academy (our West Point is called Saint- 

* "The story of French success in the exploration, the civiHzation, 
the administration, and the exploitation of Africa, is one of the won- 
der tales of history. That she has relied on the resources of science 
rather than those of militarism makes her achievement the more 
remarkable. . . . Look at Senegambia as it is now under French 
rule. . . . Contrast the modernized Dahomey of to-day with its 
railways, schools, and hospitals with the blood-soaked country of 
the early sixties; remember that Algeria has doubled in population 
since [the time of] the last Dey — and you will have a bird's-eye 
view, as it were, of what the French have accompHshed in the colo- 
nizing field." E. Alexander Powell, The Last Frontier, New York, 
191 2, p. 25. Concerning the Arabs under French rule, Edgar A. 
Forbes writes: "The conquered race may thank the stars that its 
destiny rests in a hand that seldom wears the rough gauntlet." The 
Land of the White Helmet, New York, 19 10, p. 94. 



272 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

Cyr), and never to be without a solid, permanent 
army, for, as he said, in a speech to Congress in 
1796: "However pacific the general policy of a 
nation may be, it ought never to be without an 
adequate stock of military knowledge for emer- 
gencies . . . war might often depend not upon its 
own choice." Of this we are only too well aware. 
There is scarcely, however, a question that 
oftener recurs under his pen in his letters to his 
French friends than the care with which wars 
should be avoided, and no hopes were more 
fondly cherished by him than that, some day, 
human quarrels might be settled otherwise than 
by bloodshed. To Rochambeau, who had in- 
formed him that war-clouds which had recently 
appeared in Eiu-ope were dissipated (soon, it is 
true, to return more threatening), he expressed, 
in 1786, his joy at what he considered a proof that 
mankind was becoming "more enlightened and 
more humanized." To his friend David Hum- 
phreys he had written from Mount Vernon, July 
25, 1785: "My first wish is to see this plague to 
mankind (war) banished from off the earth, and 
the sons and daughters of this world employed 
in more pleasing and innocent amusements than 
in preparing implements and exercising them for 
the destruction of mankind. Rather than quarrel 
about territory, let the poor, the needy, the op- 
pressed of the earth, and those who want land, 



WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 273 

resort to the fertile plains of our Western country, 
the second land of promise, and there dwell in 
peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment." 
His dream was of mankind one day "connected 
like one great family in fraternal ties." ^ 

On this matter, of such paramount importance 
to all the world, and in spite of so much, so very 
much remaining to be done, we may, I hope, 
consider in France that our Republic woiild de- 
serve the approval of the departed leader. We 
have indeed vied with the United States (and 
praise be rendered to empires and kingdoms who 
have played also the part of realms of good- will), 
in an effort to find better means than wars for 
the settlement of human quarrels. Success could 
not be expected at once, but it is something to 
have honestly, earnestly tried. The great man 
would have judged failures with indulgence, for 
he well knew how others' dispositions are to be 
taken into account. "In vain," he had said, "is 
it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished 
by fond wishes for peace." ^ 

And at the present hour, when it seems to the 

1 To Lafayette, Aug. 15, 1786. Cf. below, p. 347. Same views in 
Franklin, who had written to his friend David Hartley, one of the 
British plenipotentiaries for the peace: "What would you think of 
a proposition, if I should make it, of a family compact between 
England, France, and America? . . . What repeated follies are those 
repeated wars ! You do not want to conquer and govern one another. 
Why, then, should you continually be employed in injuring and de- 
stroying one another ? " Passy, Oct. 16, 1783. 'June 15, 1782. 



274 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 

author of these Hnes that, as he writes, his ears 
are filled with the sound of guns, wafted by the 
wind over the submarine-haunted ocean, what 
would be the feeling of our former commander 
if he saw what is taking place, and the stand made 
by the descendants of those soldiers intrusted 
years ago to his leadership ? Perhaps he would 
think, as he did, when told by Lafayette of a 
recent visit to the battle-fields of Frederick II of 
Prussia : ' ' To view the several fields of battle over 
which you passed could not, among other sensa- 
tions, have failed to excite this thought: 'Here 
have fallen thousands of gallant spirits to satisfy 
the ambitions of their sovereign, or to support 
them perhaps in acts of oppression and injustice. 
Melancholy reflection ! For what wise purpose 
does Providence permit this ? ' " 

Perhaps — who knows ? — considering the silent 
resolution, abnegation, and unanimity with which 
the whole people, from the day when war was de- 
clared on them by a relentless enemy, tried to up- 
hold the cause of independence and liberalism in 
a world-wide conflict, the leader might be tempted 
to write once more in the pages of his private 
journal the three words he had written on May 
I, 1 78 1. Who knows ? Of one thing we are sure, 
no approval could please us more than that of 
the commander-in-chief of former days. 



IV 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ON two tragic occasions, at a century's dis- 
tance, the fate of tlie United States has 
trembled in the balance : would they be a 
free nation ? Would they continue to be one 
nation ? A leader was wanted on both occasions, 
a very different one in each case. This boon was 
granted to the American people, who had a Wash- 
ington when a Washington was needed, and a 
Lincoln when a Lincoln could save them. Neither 
would have adequately performed the other's task. 
A century of gradually increasing prosperity 
had elapsed when came the hour of the nation's 
second trial. Though it may seem to us small, 
compared with what we have seen in our days, 
the development had been considerable, the scat- 
tered colonies of yore had become one of the 
great Powers of the world, with domains reaching 
from one ocean to the other; the immense conti- 
nent had been explored; new cities were dotting 
the wilderness of former days. When in 1803 
France had, of her own will, ceded the Louisiana 
territories, which have been divided since into 
fourteen States, minds had been staggered ; many 
in the Senate had shown themselves averse to the 
ratification of the treaty, thinking that it might 

277 



278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

prove rather a curse than a boon. "As to Louisi- 
ana, this new, immense, unbounded world," Sen- 
ator White, of Delaware, had said, "if it should 
ever be incorporated into this Union ... I be- 
lieve it will be the greatest curse that could at 
present befall us; it may be productive of in- 
numerable evils, and especially of one that I fear 
even to look upon." 

What the senator feared to look upon was the 
possibility, awful and incredible as it might seem, 
of people being so rash as to go and live beyond 
the Mississippi. Attempts would, of course, be 
made, he thought, to prevent actions which would 
entail such grave responsibilities for the govern- 
ment; but those meritorious attempts on the 
part of the authorities would probably fail. "It 
would be as well to pretend to inhibit the fish from 
swimming in the sea. . . . To every man ac- 
quainted with the manner in which our Western 
country has been settled, such an idea must be 
chimerical." People will go, "that very popula- 
tion will go, that would otherwise occupy part 
of our present territory." The results will be 
unspeakable: "Our citizens will be removed to 
the immense distance of two or three thousand 
miles from the capital of the Union, where they 
will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general gov- 
ernment; their affections will be alienated; they 
will gradually begin to view us as strangers ; they 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 279 

will form other commercial connections, and our 
interests will become distinct." 

The treaty had been ratified, however, and the 
prediction, not of Senator White, of Delaware, but 
of Senator Jackson, of Georgia, has proved true, 
the latter having stated in his answer that if they 
both could "return at the proper period," that is, 
"in a century," they would find that the region 
was not, as had been forecasted, "a howling wil- 
derness," but "the seat of science and civil- 
ization." ^ The fact is that if the two senators 
had been able to return at the appointed date, 
they would have seen the exposition of St. Louis. 

Progress had been constant ; modem inventions 

^ Debates mid Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, vol. 
XIII, col. 2$ ff., November 2 and 3, 1803. Senator White had also ob- 
jected that the price, of fifteen million dollars, was too high; while 
the French plenipotentiary, Barbe-Marbois, had observed that the 
lands still unoccupied, to be handed to the American Government 
" would have a value of several billions before a century had elapsed," 
in which he was no bad prophet. Marbois added : "Those who knew 
the importance of a perfect understanding between these two coun- 
tries attached more value to the twenty million francs set apart for 
the American claims than to the sixty offered to France." In ac- 
cordance again with Senator White, the deciding motive had not 
been that longing for "a perfect understanding" mentioned by Mar- 
bois, but a feehng that Louisiana would, at the next war, "inevitably 
fall into the hands of the British." "Of course, it would," future 
Marshal Berthier, who was averse to the cession, had observed when 
the point had been mentioned at the council held at the Tuileries, 
before the First Consul Bonaparte, on Easter Day, 1803, "but Han- 
over would just as soon be in our hands, and an exchange would 
take place at the peace. . . . Remember this: no navy without 
colonies; no colonies without a navy." Barbe-Marbois, Histoire 
de la Loidsiane, Paris, 1829, pp. 295, 315, 330. 



280 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had brought the remotest parts of the country 
nearer together. The telegraph had enabled ' ' the 
rays of the general government" to reach the 
farthest regions of the territory. That extraor- 
dinary attempt, the first transcontinental rail- 
road, was soon to be begun (1863) and was to be 
finished six years later. 

And now all seemed to be in doubt again; the 
nation was young, wealthy, powerful, prosperous; 
it had vast domains and resources, no enemies, 
and yet it looked as though her fate would parallel 
that of the old empires of which Tacitus speaks, 
and which, without foes, crumble to pieces under 
their own weight. 

Within her frontiers elements of destruction or 
disruption had been growing; animosities were 
embittered among people equally brave, bold, and 
sure of their rights. The edifice raised by Wash- 
ington was shaking on its base ; a catastrophe was 
at hand, such a one as he had himself foreseen as 
possible from the first. Slavery, he had thought, 
should be gradually but thoroughly abolished. 
"Your late purchase," he had written to Lafay- 
ette, "of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with 
a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a gen- 
erous and noble proof of hiimanity. Would to 
God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into 
the minds of the people of this country, but I 
despair of seeing it." ^ And to John Francis 

*May 10, 1786. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 281 

Mercer: "I never mean (unless some particular 
circumstance should compel me to it) to possess 
another slave by purchase, it being among my 
first wishes to see some plan adopted by which 
slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, 
sure, and imperceptible degrees."^ For many 
reasons the steadiness of the new-born Union 
caused him anxiety. "We are known," he had 
written to Doctor W. Gordon, "by no other char- 
acter among nations than as the United States. 
. . . When the bond of union gets once broken 
everything ruinous to our future prospects is to 
be apprehended. The best that can come of it, 
in my humble opinion, is that we shall sink into 
obsciirity, unless our civil broils should keep us 
in remembrance and fill the page of history with 
the direful consequences of them." ^ 

The dread hour had now struck, and civil broils 
meant to fill the page of history were at hand. 
Then it was that, in a middle-sized city of one 
hundred thousand inhabitants, not yet a world- 
famous one, Chicago by name, the Republican 
convention, assembled there for the first time, 
met to choose a candidate for the presidency, 
and on Friday, i8th of May, i860, selected a 
man whom my predecessor of those days, an- 
nouncing in an unprinted report the news to his 
government, described as "a man almost un- 
known, Mr. Abraham Lincoln." And so he was; 

* September 9, 17S6. ^ July 8, 1783. 



282 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



his own party had hesitated to nominate him; 
only on the third ballot, after two others in which 
he did not lead, the convention decided that the 
fate of the party, of abolitionism, and of the 
Union would be placed in the hands of that "man 
almost unknown," Mr. Abraham Lincoln. 

The search-light of history has since been 
turned on the most obscure parts of his career; 
every incident of it is known; many sayings of 
his to which neither he nor his hearers attributed 
any importance at the moment have become 
household words. Biographies innumerable, in 
pamphlet form or in many volumes, have told us 
of the deeds of Abraham Lincoln, of his appear- 
ance, of his peculiarities, of his virtues, and of 
the part he played in the history of the world, 
not alone the world of his day, but that of after- 
time. For not only the souvenir of his personality 
and of his examples, and the consequences of 
what he did, survive among us, but so do also a 
nimiber of his clean-cut, memorable, guiding sen- 
tences which continue alive and active among 
men. His mind is still living. 

Few suspected such a future at the time of his 
election. "We all remember," wrote, years later, 
the French Academician, Prevost-Paradol, "the 
anxiety with which we awaited the first words of 
that President then unknown, upon whom a 
heavy task had fallen, and from whose advent to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 283 

power might be dated the ruin or regeneration of 
his country. All we knew was that he had sprung 
from the humblest walks of life; that his youth 
had been spent in manual labor ; that he had then 
risen, by degrees, in his town, in his county, and 
in his State. What was this favorite of the peo- 
ple ? Democratic societies are liable to errors 
which are fatal to them. But as soon as Mr. 
Lincoln arrived in Washington, as soon as he 
spoke, all our doubts and fears were dissipated, 
and it seemed to us that destiny itself had pro- 
nounced in favor of the good cause, since in such 
an emergency it had given to the country an honest 
man." 

Well indeed might people have wondered and 
felt anxious when they remembered how little 
training in greatest affairs the new ruler had had, 
and the incredible difficulty of the problems he 
would have to solve: to solve, his heart bleeding 
at the very thought, for he had to fight, "not 
enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies !" 

No romance of adventure reads more like a ro- 
mance than the true story of Lincoln's youth and 
of the wanderings of his family, from Virginia to 
Kentucky, from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indi- 
ana to the newly-formed State of Illinois, having 
first to clear a part of the forest, then to build 
a doorless, windowless, floorless log cabin, with 
beds of leaves, and one room for all the uses of 



284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the nine inmates : Lincoln, the grandson of a man 
killed by the Indians, the son of a father who 
never succeeded in anything, and whose utmost 
literary accomplishment, taught him by his wife, 
and which he had in common with the father of 
Shakespeare, consisted in "bunglingly writing his 
own name," the whole family leading a life in 
comparison with which that of Robinson Crusoe 
was one of sybaritic enjoyment. That in those 
trackless, neighborless, bookless parts of the coun- 
try the future President could learn and educate 
himself was the first great wonder of his life. 
His school-days, in schools as primitive as the rest 
of his surroundings, attended at spare moments, 
did not amount, put together, to so much as one 
year, during which he learned, as he stated after- 
ward, how "to read, write, and cipher to the rule 
of three, but that was all . . . till within his 
twenty-third year, he was almost constantly 
handling that most useful instrument" — an axe, 
not a pen.^ The event proved once more that 
learning does not so much depend upon the mas- 
ter's teaching as upon the pupil's desire. This 
desire never left him; as recorded by himself, he 
"nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since 
he was a member of Congress." 

But no book, school, nor talk with refined men 

> "Short Autobiography, written at the request of a friend," Coin- 
plete Works, ed. Nicolay and Hay, 1905, pp. 26, 27. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 285 

would have taught him what this rough Hfe did. 
Confronted every day and every hour of the day 
with problems which had to be solved, problems 
of food, of clothing, of shelter, of escaping disease 
— "ague and fever ... by which they [the people 
of the place] were greatly discouraged" ^ — of de- 
veloping mind and body with scarcely any books 
but those borrowed from distant neighbors, in 
doubt most of the time as to what was going on 
in the wide world, he got the habit of seeing, de- 
ciding, and acting for himself. Accustomed from 
childhood to live surrounded by the unknown and 
to meet the unexpected, in a region "with many 
bears," he wrote later, "and other wild animals 
still in the woods," his soul learned to be aston- 
ished at nothing and, instead of losing any time 
in useless wondering, to seek at once the way 
out of the difficulty. What the forest, what the 
swamp, what the river taught Lincoln cannot be 
overestimated. After long years of it, and shorter 
years at now- vanished New Salem, then at Spring- 
field, at Vandalia, the former capital of Illinois, 
where he met some descendants of his precursors 
in the forest, the French "coureurs de bois," ^ 

^ Ibid., 28, 29. 

2 Some French settlements were still in existence in the region, 
and were still French. "The French settlements about Kaskaskia 
retained much of their national character, and the pioneers from the 
South who visited them or settled among them never ceased to 
wonder at their gayety, their peaceable industry, and their domestic 
affection, which they did not care to dissemble and conceal like their 



286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

after years of political apprenticeship which had 
given him but a limited notoriety, almost sud- 
denly he found himself transferred to the post 
of greatest honor and greatest danger. And 
what then would say the "man almost unknown," 
the backwoodsman of yesterday ? What would 
he say ? What did he say ? The right thing. 

He was accustomed not to be surprised, but to 
ponder, decide, and act. The pondering part was 
misunderstood by many who never ceased in 
his day to complain and remonstrate about his 
supposed hesitancy; many of Napoleon's generals, 
and for the same cause, spoke with disgust, at 
times, of their chief's hesitations, as if a weak will 
were one of his faults. Confronted with circxim- 
stances which were so extraordinary as to be new 
to all, Lincoln was the man least astonished in 
the government. His rough and shrewd instinct 
proved of better avail than the clever minds of his 
more-refined and better-instructed seconds. It 
was Lincoln's instinct which checked Seward's 
complicated schemes and dangerous calculations. 
Lincoln could not calculate so cleverly, but he 
could guess better. 

shy and reticent neighbors. It was a daily spectacle which never 
lost its strangeness for the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians to see the 
Frenchman returning from his work greeted by his wife and children 
with embraces of welcome 'at the gate of his dooryard, and in view 
of all the villagers.' The natural and kindly fraternization of the 
Frenchmen with the Indians was also a cause of wonder." Nicolay 
and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 1904, I, 58. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 287 

In writing the words quoted above, Prevost- 
Paradol was alluding to the now famous first in- 
augural address. But even before Lincoln had 
reached Washington he had, so to say, given his 
measure. Passing through Philadelphia on his 
way to the capital, he had been entertained at 
Independence Hall and, addressing the audience 
gathered there, had told how he had often medi- 
tated on the virtues and dangers of the men who 
used to meet within those walls in the days when 
the existence of the nation was at stake, and on 
the famous Declaration signed there by them. 
The piu-port of it, said the new President, is 
"that in due time the weights should be lifted 
from the shoulders of all men, and that all should 
have an equal chance." And he added: "Now, 
my friends, can this country be saved on that 
basis ? If it can, I will consider myself one of 
the happiest of men in the world if I can help to 
save it. . . . If it cannot be saved upon that 
principle ... I would rather be assassinated on 
this spot than to surrender it."^ 

France was then an empire, governed by Napo- 
leon III. During the great struggle of four years, 
part of the French people were for the North, 
and part for the South ; they should not be blamed : 
it was the same in America. 

But, to a man, the increasing niimbers of French 

^ February 22, 1861. 



288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Liberals, making ready for a definitive attempt at 
a republican form of government in their own 
land, were for the abolition of slavery and the 
maintenance of the Union. The American exam- 
ple was the great one which gave heart to our 
most progressive men. Americans had proved 
that republican government was possible in a 
great modern country by having one. If it 
broke to pieces, so would break the hopes of those 
among us who trusted that one day we would 
have one, too — as we have. These men followed 
with dire anxiety the events in America. 

They had all known Lafayette, who died only 
in 1834, a lifelong apostle of liberty and of the 
American cause. The tradition left by him had 
been continued by the best thinkers and the most 
enlightened and generous minds France had pro- 
duced in the course of the century, such men as 
Tocqueville, Laboiilaye, Gasparin, Pelletan, and 
many others. Constant friends of the United 
States, and stanch supporters of the liberal prin- 
ciples, they had, so to say, taken the torch from 
the hands of dying Lafayette and passed it on 
to the new generation. Tocqueville, who was 
not to see the great crisis, had published in 1835, 
with extraordinary success, his work on American 
democracy, showing that individual liberty, equal- 
ity for all, and decentralization were the goal 
toward which mankind was steadily moving, and 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 289 

that such a system, with all its defects, was better 
than autocratic government with all its guar- 
antees. Although living under a monarchy, he 
could not help sneering at the kindness of those 
omnipotent governments who, in their paternal 
desire to spare the people they govern all trouble, 
would like to spare them even the "trouble of 
thinking." 

Those who felt like him eloquently defended 
in their books, pamphlets, and articles, when 
the crisis came, the cause of the Union, and 
strongly influenced public opinion in European 
countries. Such was the case, for example, with 
the America before Europe of Agenor de Gasparin, 
full of enthusiasm for the States, and of confidence 
in the ultimate issue. "No," said the author in 
the conclusion of his work, published early in 1862, 
"the sixteenth President of the Union will not 
be its last; no, the eighty-fifth year of that na- 
tion will not prove her last ; her flag will come out 
of the war, rent by bullets, blackened by powder, 
but more glorious than ever, and without having 
dropped in the storm any of its thirty-four stars." ^ 

To Gasparin Lincoln wrote thereupon: "You 
are much admired in America for the ability of 
your writings, and much loved for your gener- 
osity to us and your devotion to liberal principles 
generally. ... I am very happy to know that 

^ UAmerique devant V Europe, Paris, 1862; conclusion. 



290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

my course has not conflicted with your judgment 
of propriety and poUcy. I can only say that I 
have acted upon my best convictions without 
selfishness or malice, and that, by the help of 
God, I shall continue to do so."^ 

But there were, withal, men among us who, 
remembering the trials of our revolutionary years, 
the most terrible any nation had gone through, 
inclined to consider that, as Tocqueville had said, 
"to think" was indeed a real trouble, and that 
thinkers might prove very troublesome people. 
Those men, too, watched with care what was 
going on in America; the quiet development of 
the country under democratic institutions caused 
them little enough joy, as being the actual con- 
demnation of their most cherished theories. They 
kept saying: the country has no neighbors, it is 
exposed to no storm; any system is good enough 
under such exceptional conditions. If there was 
any storm, the worthlessness of such institutions 
would soon be obvious. And it had come to pass 
that the storm had arisen, and that a man "al- 
most unknown" had been placed at the helm. 

Then developed that famous struggle between 
equally brave opponents, with its various fortunes, 
its miseries, its hecatombs, and the coming of 
days so dark that it often seemed as though 
there remained little chance for the survival of 

^Washington, August, 4, 1862. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 291 

one great, powerful, united nation: the hatreds 
were so deep, the losses so immense. One of the 
generals who served the cause of the Union was 
French, and as a colonel first commanded a regi- 
ment, the 55th New York, otherwise called the 
Lafayette Guards, in which French blood pre- 
dominated, and who wore the red trousers, red 
kepi, and blue coats of the French army. It was 
before the war one of those regiments whose func- 
tions, owing to the prevalenpe of peace, had for 
a long time been of the least warlike, mainly 
consisting in parades and banquets, so much so 
that, with that tendency to irony rarely lacking 
in Gauls, those Gardes Lafayette had nicknamed 
themselves "Gardes La fourchette."^ War came, 
the country was changed, a new spirit pervaded 
the nation, and the Gardes La fourchette became 
Lafayette again, and worthy of the name. 

General de Trobriand has left a captivating 
account of the campaign^ and of what his first 
regiment did in it, beginning with military in- 



^ "L'esprit Gaulois, toujours moqueur, avail saisi le c6te plaisant j 
de cet inutile etalage d'epaulettes et de tambours, et les officiers du/ 
55° New York qui, a I'heure du danger, prodiguerent pour leur 
nouvelle patrie le sang frangais sous la direction d'un chef habile et/ 
vaillant, M. de Trobriand, s'etaient donnes a eux-memes, dans Tun 
des repas de corps qui terminent toujours ces ceremonies, le titre 
joyeux de 'Gardes La fourchette.'" Comte de Paris, Histoire de la 
Suerre civile en Amerique, 1874, I, 311. 

'^ Quatre ans de catnpagttes a Varmee du Potomac, par Regis de 
Trobriand, ex-Major General an service volontaire des Etats Unis 



292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

struction hastily imparted before the start by 
French sergeants, "some of whom had made war 
in Algeria, others in the Crimea or Italy, familiar, 
all of them, with field service"; then the coming 
of his soldiers to Washington, as yet a small, 
sparsely peopled city, with ' ' Pennsylvania Avenue 
for its principal artery"; their following Rock 
Creek, not yet a public park, "cadencing their 
march by singing the Marseillaise or the Chant 
des Girondins, hymns unknown to the echoes of 
the region, which repeated them for the first 
time, perhaps the last," and crossing Chain 
Bridge to camp beyond the Potomac. 

On one memorable day, in the winter of 1862, 
the regiment, encamped then at Tennallytown, 
entertained Lincoln himself. The occasion was 
the presentation to it by the hands of the President 
of two flags, a French and an American one. 
The day chosen had been the 8th of January, as 
being the anniversary of the battle of New Or- 
leans, won by Andrew Jackson, some of whose 

d'Ameriqiie, Paris, 1867, 2 vols. As is well known, two French princes 
took part in the war as staff-officers in the Army of the Potomac, 
the Comte de Paris and the Due de Chartres. An American officer I 
who was present told me that, whether on foot or on horseback, the 
Comte de Paris had the habit of stooping. During a severe engage- ! 
ment he was asked to carry an order across an open field, quite ex- 
posed to the enemy's fire. He took the order, straightened on his 
saddle, crossed the field quite erect, fulfilled his mission, recrossed 
the field, keeping perfectly straight, and when back in the lines, 
stooped again. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 293 

troops were French Creoles, who, they too, had 
fought to the sound of the Marseillaise. 

Mrs. Lincoln had accompanied the President. 
There was a banquet which the regiment had had 
cooked by its own soldier-cooks, who surpassed 
themselves. "The President heartily partook of 
the meal. Never, was he pleased to say, had he 
eaten so well since he had entered the White 
Hpuse. He wanted to taste of everything, and 
his gayety and good humor showed well enough 
how much he enjoyed this diversion in the midst 
of the anxious cares with which he was oppressed 
at that moment."^ 

There were toasts, of course; the then Colonel 
de Trobriand drank to the "prompt re-establish- 
ment of the Union, not so prompt, however, that 
the 55 th may not first have time to do something 
for it on the battlefield." President Lincoln an- 
swered good-humoredly : "Since the Union is not 
to be re-established before the 55th has had its 
battle, I drink to the battle of the 55th, and wish 
that it may take place as soon as possible." 

The 55th had its battle, and many others, too; 
the beautiful American flag handed to it on the 
8th of January was torn to shreds by grape-shot; 
at Fredericksburg only the staff was left; during 
the course of that terrible day even the staff was 
broken, and that was the end of it. It was also 

' Quatre ans de campagnes, I, 131. 



294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the end of the 55th: reduced to 210 men, it was 
merged into the 33 d. 

Lincoln's instinct, his good sense, his personal 
disinterestedness, his warmth of heart for friend 
or foe, his high aims, led him through the awful 
years of anguish and bloodshed during which, 
ceaselessly, increased the number of fields dotted 
with tombs, and no one knew, so great were the 
odds, whether there would be one powerful nation 
or two less powerful, inimical to one another. 
They led him through the worst and through the 
best hours; and that of triumph found him none 
other than what he had ever been before, a shrewd 
man of sense, a convinced man of duty, the de- 
voted servant of his country, but with deeper fur- 
ro;vs on his face and more melancholy in his heart. 
"We must not be enemies." 

A French traveller who saw him at his second 
inauguration has thus described him: "I shall 
never forget the deep impression I felt when I saw 
come on to the platform the strange-looking great 
man to whom the American people had been so 
happy as to intrust their destinies. The gait was 
heavy, slow, irregular; the body long, lean, over 
six feet, with stooping shoulders, the long arms of 
a boatman, the large hands of a carpenter, ex- 
traordinary hands, with feet in proportion. . . . 
The turned-down shirt-collar uncovered the pro- 
truding muscles of a yellow neck, above which 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN • 295 

shot forth a mass of black hair, thick, and bris- 
thng as a bunch of pine-boughs; a face of irre- 
sistible attraction. 

"From this coarse bark emerged a forehead 
and eyes belonging to a superior nature. In this 
body was sheathed a soul wondrous by its great- 
ness and moral beauty. On the brow, deep-fur- 
rowed with lines, could be detected the thoughts 
and anxieties of the statesman; and in the large 
black eyes, deep and penetrating, whose dominant 
expression was good-will and kindness mixed 
with melancholy, one discovered an inexhaustible 
charity, giving to the word its highest meaning, 
that is, perfect love for mankind."^ 

The nation was saved, and when the work was 
done Lincoln went to his doom and fell, as he had 
long foreseen, a victim to the cause for which he 
had fought. 

When the news of his tragic death reached 

" Ahrahani Lincoln, by Alphonse Jouault. The work was begun 
in Washington at the time of Lincoln's assassination, which the 
author witnessed, but printed only in 1875. The text of the second 
inaugural address had been read in France with great admiration. 
The famous bishop of Orleans, Dupanloup, wrote concerning it to 
Augustin Cochin: "Mr. Lincoln expresses with solemn and touch- 
ing gravity the feelings which, I am sure, pervade superior souls 
in the North as in the South. ... I thank you for having made 
me read this beautiful page of the history of great men, and I beg 
you to tell Mr. Bigelow of my sympathetic sentiments. I would 
hold it an honor if he were so good as to convey an expression of 
them to Mr. Lincoln." Orleans, April 2, 1865; an appendix to 
Montalembert's Victoire dii Nord, Paris, 1865. 



296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

France, the emotion was intense; party lines at 
that solemn hour disappeared for a moment, and 
the country was imanimous in the expression of 
her horror. The Emperor and Empress tele- 
graphed their condolences to Mrs. Lincoln; the 
Senate and Chamber voted addresses of sympathy ; 
M. Rouher, the premier, interrupted by applause 
at every word, expressed himself as follows in pro- 
posing the vote: "Mr. Abraham Lincoln has dis- 
played in the afflicting struggle which convulses 
his country that calm firmness which is a neces- 
sary condition for the accomplishment of great 
duties. After victory he had shown himself gen- 
erous, moderate, and conciliatory." Then fol- 
lowed these remarkable words: "The first chas- 
tisement that Providence inflicts on crime is to 
render it powerless to retard the march of good. 
. . . The work of appeasement commenced by 
a great citizen will be completed by the national 
will." 

Addressing the Chamber in the same strain, its 
President, Mr. Schneider, said: "That execrable 
crime has revolted all that is noble in the heart 
of France. Nowhere has more profound or more 
universal emotion been felt than in our country. 
. . . After having shown his immovable firmness 
in the struggle, Mr. Lincoln, by the wisdom of his 
language and of his views, seemed destined to bring 
about a fruitful and durable reconciliation be- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 297 

tween the sons of America. . . . France ardently 
desires the re-estabHshment of peace in the midst 
of that great nation, her ally and her friend." 

But more noteworthy than all was the feeling 
of unofficial France, that of the whole people. 
Trying to describe it, the American minister to 
France, but recently taken from among us, Mr. 
Bigelow, wrote home: "The press of the metrop- 
olis shows sufficiently how overwhelming is the 
public sentiment"; and sending, only as samples, 
a number of testimonials of sympathy received 
by him, he added: "They will suffice to show not 
only how profoundly the nation was shocked by 
the dreadful crime which terminated President 
Lincoln's earthly career, but how deep a hold he 
had taken upon the respect and affections of the 
French people." 

Once more, owing to the death of a great Amer- 
ican, the whole nation had been moved. From 
thirty-one French cities came addresses of con- 
dolence; students held meetings, unfavorably 
seen by the imperial police, little pleased to find 
how closely associated in the sentiments expressed 
therein were admiration for Lincoln's work and 
the longing for a republic similar to that over ( 
which he had presided. The youthful president 
of such a meeting thus conveyed to Mr, Bigelow 
the expression of what was felt by "the young 
men of the schools": "In President Lincoln we 



298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mourn a fellow citizen; for no country is now 
inaccessible, and we consider as ours that coun- 
try where there are neither masters nor slaves, 
where every man is free or is fighting to become 
free. 

"We are the fellow citizens of John Brown, of 
Abraham Lincoln, and of Mr. Seward. We young 
people, to whom the future belongs, must have 
the courage to found a true democracy, and we 
will have to look beyond the ocean to learn how 
a people who have made themselves free can pre- 
serve their freedom. . . . 

"The President of the great republic is dead, 
but the republic itself shall live forever." 

Deputations flocked to the American legation, 
"so demonstrative" that the police more than 
once interfered, as if to remind the delegates that 
they were not living as yet in a land of liberty. 
"I have been occupied most of the afternoon," 
Bigelow wrote to Seward, "in receiving deputa- 
tions of students and others who have called to 
testify their sorrow and sympathy. Unfortu- 
nately, their feelings were so demonstrative in 
some instances as to provoke the intervention of 
the police, who would only allow them in very 
limited numbers through the streets. ... I am 
sorry to hear that some have been sent to prison 
in consequence of an intemperate expression of 
their feelings. I can now count sixteen policemen 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 299 

from my window patrolling about in the neigh- 
borhood, who occasionally stop persons calling to 
see me, and in some instances, I am told, send 
them away."i 

A unique thing happened, unparalleled any- 
where else. A subscription was opened to offer a 
commemorative medal in gold to the unfortunate 
widow, and this again did not overplease the 
police. The idea had occurred to a provincial 
paper, the Phare de la Loire ; its success was im- 
mediate. All the great names in the Liberal party 
appeared on the list of the committee, Victor 
Hugo's conspicuous among them, and with his 
those of Etienne Arago, Louis Blanc, Littre, 
Michelet, Pelletan, Edgar Quinet, and others. 
In order to allow the poorer classes to take part, 
and so as to show that the offering was a truly 
national one, the maximum for each subscriber 
was limited to two cents. 

The poorer classes took part, indeed, with 
alacrity; the necessary sum was promptly col- 
lected; the medal was struck, and it was pre- 
sented by Eugene Pelletan to Mr. Bigelow, with 
these words: "Tell Mrs. Lincoln that in this 
little box is the heart of France." The inscrip- 
tion, in French, is an excellent summing up of 

• April 28, 1865. Text as well as that of the documents just 
quoted in The Assassination of President Lincoln. Appendix to 
Diplomatic Correspondence of 186 j, Government Printing Office, 1866. 



300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln's character and career: "Dedicated by 
French Democracy to Lincoln, President, twice 
elected, of the United States — Lincoln, honest 
man, who abolished slavery, re-established the 
Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the 
statue of liberty."-^ 

The French press had been unanimous; from 
the Royalist Gazette de France to the Liberal Jour- 
nal des Debats came expressions of admiration and 
sorrow, by the writers of greatest repute, present 
or future members, in many cases, of the French 
Academy, Prevost-Paradol, John Lemoine, Emile 
de Girardin, the historian Henri Martin, the pub- 
licist and future member of the National Assem- 
bly of 1 87 1, Peyrat, and with them some ardent 
Catholics, like Montalembert. 

"Who among us," said the Gazette de France, 
"would think of pitying Lincoln ? A public man, 
he enters by the death which he has received in 
the midst of the work of pacification after victory 
into that body of the elite of the historic army 
which Mr. Guizot once called the battalion of 
Plutarch. A Christian, he has just ascended be- 
fore the throne of the final Judge, accompanied 
by the souls of four million slaves created, like 

' "Dedie par la Democratic Frangaise a Lincoln, President deux 
fois elu des Etats Unis — Lincoln, honnete homme, abolit I'esclavage, 
retablit I'union, sauva la Republique, sans voiler la statue de la 
liberte." The medal is now the property of the Presidenc's son, 
Mr. Robert T. Lincoln. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 301 

ours, in the Image of God, and who by a word from 
him have been endowed with freedom."^ 

In his La Victoire du Nord aux Etats Unis, 
Montalembert expressed, with his usual eloquence 
and warmth of heart, the same sorrow at Lin- 
coln's death, and the same joy also at the "success 
of a good cause served by honorable means and 
won by honest people. . . . God is to be thanked 
because, according to the surest accounts, victory 
has remained pure, unsullied by crimes or ex- 
cesses. . . . That nation rises now to the first 
rank among the great peoples of the world. . . . 
Some used to say: Don't talk to us of your Amer- 
ica with its slavery. She is now without slaves; 
let us talk of her." 

But happy as he was at the results, Montalem- 
bert rendered, nevertheless, full justice to the 
South and its great leaders: "The two parties, 
the two camps, have shown an equal courage, the 
same indomitable tenacity, the same wonderful 
energy . . . the same spirit of sacrifice. All our 
sympathies are for the North, but they in no way 
diminish our admiration for the South. . . . 
How not to admire the Southerners, while regret- 
ting that such rare and high qualities had not been 
dedicated to an irreproachable cause ! What men, 
and also, and especially, what women ! Daugh- 
ters, wives, mothers, those women of the South 

1 A very long article by L. de Gaillard, April 30, 1868. 



302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

have revived, in the midst of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the patriotism, devotion, abnegation of the 
Roman ones in the heyday of the repubHc. CleHa, 
CorneHa, Portia have found their equals in many 
a hamlet, many a plantation of Louisiana or 
Virginia."^ 

Many among the Liberals seized this oppor- 
tunity to praise the American system of govern- 
ment as opposed to European ones: "Democ- 
racy," said Peyrat, "is not incompatible with 
great extent of territory or the power and duration 
of a great government. This has been demon- 
strated on the other side of the Atlantic, and that 
is the service which the United States have ren- 
dered to liberty. 

"They have rendered another, equally impor- 
tant to human dignity, in showing that the citizen 
has become among them great and powerful, pre- 
cisely because he has been little governed; they 
have proved that the real grandeur of the state 
depends upon the high personal qualities of the 
individuals. In our old societies, power put man 
into tutelage, or rather, man put himself in 
that position at the hands of the government, to 
which he looked for everything he wanted in life 
and for solutions which no government, whether 
monarchical or republican, could give. 

"The United States, on the contrary, have 

1 La Vidoire du Nord, Paris, 1865, pp. 7, 11, 20, 23. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 303 

granted to public power just what it is fit that 
that power should possess, neither more nor less." ^ 
In the Journal des Debats, Prevost-Paradol, 
one of the best writers of the day, said: "The 
political instinct which caused enlightened French- 
men to be interested in the maintenance of Ameri- 
can power, more and more necessary to the equi- 
librium of the world, the desire to see a great 
democratic state surmount terrible trials and 
continue to give an example of the most perfect 
liberty united with the most absolute equality, 
assured to the cause of the North a number of 
friends among us. . . . Lincoln was indeed an 
honest man, if we give to the word its full mean- 
ing, or rather, the sublime sense which belongs to 
it when honesty has to contend with the severest 
trials which can agitate states and with events 
which have an influence on the fate of the world. 
. . . Mr. Lincoln had but one object in view 
from the day of his election to that of his death, 
namely, the fulfilment of his duty, and his im- 
agination never carried him beyond it. He has 
fallen at the very foot of the altar, covering it with 
his blood. But his work was done, and the spec- 
tacle of a rescued republic was what he could look 
upon with consolation when his eyes were closing 
in death. Moreover, he has not lived for his 
country alone, since he leaves to every one in the 

' In the Avenir National, May 3, 1865. 



304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

world to whom liberty and justice are dear a 
great remembrance and a great example."* 

Accounts of Lincoln's career multiplied in order 
to answer popular demand. The earliest one, by 
Achille Arnaud, was printed immediately after 
his death, and concluded thus: "There is in him 
a more august character than even that of the 
statesman and reformer, namely that of the man 
of duty. He lived by duty and for duty. . . . 
No mistake is possible; what Europe honors in 
Lincoln, whether or not she is aware of it, is 
duty. She thus affirms that there are not two 
morals, one for the masters, the other for the 
slaves; one for men in public life, the other for 
obsciire citizens; that there is only one way to 
be great: never to lie to oneself, nor to others, 
and to be just."^ 

Regis de Trobriand, w^hose loyalty to Lincoln 
never wavered, and who had believed in him even 
in the darkest hours, well saw the importance for 
the whole world of the issue of the great conflict, 
and justly stated that, though more directly con- 
cerning the United States, the fight had been for 
"those grand principles of progress and liberty 
toward which modem societies naturally tend, 
and to which civilized nations legitimately aspire. 

* April 29, 1865. 

^ Abraham Lincoln, sa naissance, sa vie, sa tnort, par Achille Arnaud, 
Redacteur a " I'Opinion Nationale." Paris, 1865, p. 96. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 305 

Such a cause is worth every sacrifice. By defend- 
ing it at all costs the United States have done 
more than fulfil a task worthy of their power and 
patriotism, for their triumph is a victory for man- 
kind." 

Lectures were delivered in France on Lincoln 
and America, one, under the chairmanship of 
Laboulaye, by Augustin Cochin, a member of the 
Institute, showing that Lincoln was "not only a 
superior type of the American race, but one of the 
highest and most respected of the human race," 
something more than a great man : a great honest 
man.^ 

As a sort of pendant and counterpart for the 
funeral ceremony held in the Invalides at the 
death of Washington, the French Academy gave 
as the subject of its grand prize in poetry: La 
mort du President Lincoln. Selected in the year 
following the event, the subject excited immense 
interest; almost a hundred poets (some of whom, 
truth to say, were only would-be poets) took part 
in the competition, which was decided in 1867; 
several of the productions proved of great literary 
merit. The prize went to a former secretary of 
embassy, Edouard Grenier, who had already made 
his mark as a gifted literary artist, and whom 
many of us still remember: a lovable old man, of 

^ Bibliotheque Liber ale — Abraham Lincoln, by Augustin Cochin, 
Paris, 1869. 



306 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

upright ideas, a model of courtesy, counting only 
friends in the very large circle of his acquain- 
tances. He ended with these admirable lines: 

^ Tous ces fleaux celestes, 
Ces ravageurs d'Etats dont les pieds triomphants 
Sur les peres broyes ecrasent les enfants, 
Grace a toi, desormais, paliront dans I'histoire. . . 
L'humanite te doit I'esclavage aboli . . . 
L'Amerique sa force et la paix revenue, 
L 'Europe un ideal de grandeur inconnue, 
Et I'avenir mettra ton image et ton nom 
Plus haut que les Cesars — aupres de Washington. 

When, in a log cabin of Kentucky, over a cen- 
tury ago, that child was born who was named 
after his grandfather killed by the Indians, Abra- 
ham Lincoln, Napoleon I swayed Eiu*ope, Jeffer- 
son was President of the United States, and the 
second War of Independence had not yet come 
to pass. It seems all very remote. But the 
memory of the great man to whom these lines 
are dedicated is as fresh in everybody's mind as 
if he had only just left us; more people, indeed, 
know of him now than was the case in his own 
day. "It is," says Plutarch, "the fortune of all 
good men that their virtue rises in glory after 
their death, and that the envy which any evil 
man may have conceived against them never sur- 
vives the envious." Such was the fate of Lincoln. 



V 
THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 20, 1906 



THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

ON the occasion of the second centennial of 
Franklin's birth, a solemn celebration, 
lasting several days, was held in Phila- 
delphia, under the auspices of the American 
Philosophical Society, founded by himself more 
than a century and a half before. 

Many Americans of fame took part in the cele- 
bration, such men as the Secretary of State 
Elihu Root, Senator Lodge, Horace H. Furness, 
former Ambassador Joseph Choate, the President 
(not yet emeritus) of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, 
Doctor Weir Mitchell, and many others. Sev- 
eral foreign nations were represented; England 
notably by one of her sons who has succeeded in 
the difficult task of adding lustre to the name he 
bears, Sir George Darwin. 

In accordance with a law passed by Congress 
two years before, a commemorative medal was, 
on that occasion, offered to France. The speech 
of acceptance is here reproduced solely to have 
a pretext for reprinting the generous and mem- 
orable address of presentation by the then Sec- 
retary of State, Mr. Elihu Root; and also in 

309 



310 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

order to help in better preserving the souvenir 
of a more than graceful act of the United States 
toward France. 

Speech by the Secretary op State Present- 
ing THE Medal 

Excellency: On the 27th of April, 1904, 
the Congress of the United States provided by 
statute that the Secretary of State should cause 
to be struck a medal to commemorate the two- 
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin 
Franklin, and that one single impression on 
gold should be presented, under the direction 
of the President of the United States, to the 
Republic of France. 

Under the direction of the President I now 
execute this law by delivering the medal to you 
as the representative 'of the Republic of France. 
This medal is the work of fraternal collaboration 
by two artists whose citizenship Americans prize 
highly, Louis and Augustus Saint- Gaudens. The 
name indicates that they may have inherited 
some of the fine artistic sense which makes 
France pre-eminent in the exquisite art of the 
medallist. 

On one side of the medal you will find the 
wise, benign, and spirited face of Franklin. On 
the other side literature, science, and philosophy 
attend, while history makes her record. The 



THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 311 

material of the medal is American gold, as was 
Franklin. 

For itself this would be but a small dividend 
upon the investments which the ardent Beau- 
marchais made for the mythical firm of Hortalez 
and Company. It would be but scanty interest 
on the never-ending loans yielded by the steady 
friendship of de Vergennes to the distressed ap- 
peals of Franklin. It is not appreciable even 
as a gift when one recalls what Lafayette, Ro- 
chambeau, de Grasse, and their gallant comrades 
were to us, and what they did for us; when one 
sees in historical perspective the great share of 
France in securing American independence, loom- 
ing always larger from our own point of view, in 
comparison with what we did for ourselves. 

But take it for your country as a token that 
with all the changing manners of the passing 
years, with all the vast and welcome influx of 
new citizens from all the countries of the earth, 
Americans have not forgotten their fathers and 
their fathers' friends. 

Know by it that we have in America a senti- 
ment for France; and a sentiment, enduring 
among a people, is a great and substantial fact 
to be reckoned with. 

We feel a little closer to you of France because 
of what you were to Franklin. Before the re- 
splendence and charm of your country's history 



312 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

— when all the world does homage to your litera- 
ture, your art, your exact science, your philo- 
sophic thought — we smile with pleasure, for we 
feel, if we do not say: "Yes, these are old friends 
of ours; they were very fond of our Ben Franklin 
and he of them." 

Made more appreciative, perhaps, by what 
France did for us when this old philosopher came 
to you, a stranger, bearing the burdens of our 
early poverty and distress, we feel that the 
enormous value of France to civilization should 
lead every lover of mankind, in whatever land, 
earnestly to desire the peace, the prosperity, the 
permanence, and the unchecked development of 
your national life. 

We, at least, can not feel otherwise; for what 
you were to Franklin we would be — we are — to 
you: always true and loyal friends. 

The French Ambassador's Answer 

On behalf of the French Republic, with feel- 
ings of gratitude, I receive the gift offered to 
my coimtry, this masterful portrait of Franklin, 
which a law of Congress ordered to be made, 
and which is signed with the name, twice famous, 
of Saint-Gaudens. 

Everything in such a present powerfully ap- 
peals to a French heart. It represents a man 
ever venerated and admired in my coimtry — the 



THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 313 

scientist, the philosopher, the inventor, the leader 
of men, the one who gave to France her first no- 
tion of what true Americans really were. "When 
you were in France," Chastellux wrote to Frank- 
lin, "there was no need to praise the Americans. 
We had only to say: Look; here is their repre- 
sentative." 

The gift is offered in this town of Philadelphia 
where there exists a hall the very name of which 
is dear to every American and every French heart 
— the Hall of Independence — and at a gathering 
of a society founded "for promoting useful knowl- 
edge," which has remained true to its principle, 
worthy of its founder, and which numbers many 
whose fame is equally great on both sides of the 
ocean. 

I receive it at the hands of one of the best 
servants of the state which this country ever pro- 
duced, no less admired at the head of her diplo- 
macy now than he was lately at the head of her 
army, one of those rare men who prove the right 
man, whatever be the place. You have listened 
to his words, and you will agree with me when I 
say that I shall have two golden gifts to forward 
to my government: the medal and Secretary 
Root's speech. 

The work of art offered by America to France 
will be sent to Paris to be harbored in that unique 
museum, her Museum of Medals, where her his- 



314 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

tory is, so to say, written in gold and bronze, from 
the fifteenth century up to now, without any 
niler, any great event, being omitted. Some of 
the American past is also written there — that 
period so glorious when French and American 
history were the same history, when first rose a 
nation that has never since ceased to rise. 

There, awaiting your gift, are preserved medals 
struck in France at the very time of the events, 
in honor of Washington, to commemorate the re- 
lief of Boston in 1776; a medal of John Paul Jones 
in honor of his naval campaign of 1779; an- 
other medal representing W. Washington, and one 
representing General Howard, to commemorate 
the battle of Cowpens in 1781; one to celebrate 
the peace of 1783 and the freedom of the thirteen 
States; one of Lafayette; one of Suifren, who 
fought so valiantly on distant seas for the same 
cause as Washington ; one, lastly, of Franklin him- 
self, dated 1784, bearing the famous inscription 
composed in honor of the great man by Turgot: 
"Eripuit caslo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." ^ 

My earnest hope is that one of the next medals 

* An official note informed the Secretary of State, in the following 
December, of the arrangements made by the French Republic for 
the preservation, among proper surroundings, of the Franklin medal: 
"In the centre of the Hall of Honor in the Museum of Medals at 
the Paris Mint, stand four ancient show-cases of the time of Louis 
XVI. One of these has been selected for the Franklin medal, which 
has been surrounded with the medals herein below enumerated, which 
were deemed the fittest to make up a worthy retinue, if the phrase 



THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 315 

to be struck and added to the series will be one 
to commemorate the resurrection of that great 
city which now, at this present hour, agonizes 
by the shores of the Pacific. The disaster of 
San Francisco has awakened a feeling of deepest 
grief in every French heart, and a feeling of ad- 
miration, too, for the manliness displayed by the 
population during this awful trial. So that what 
will be commemorated will not be only the 
American nation's sorrow, but her unfailing hero- 
ism and energy. 

Now your gift will be added to the collection 
in Paris; it will be there in its proper place. 
The thousands who visit this museum will be re- 
minded by it that the ties happily formed long 
ago are neither broken nor distended, and they 
will contemplate with a veneration equal to that 
of their ancestors the features of one whom Mira- 
beau justly called one of the heroes of mankind. 



The Franklin ceremony had occurred at the 
time of the San Francisco catastrophe, at a mo- 
ment when, communication having been cut, 
anxiety was intense. 

be permissible." There follows a description of sixteen medals com- 
memorative of Franco-American history, placed in the same case. 
"House of Representatives," 59th Congress, 2d session, Document 
No. 416. 



316 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 

I had spoken without instructions, but the 
French Government took their representative's 
words to the letter. The medal was ordered, and 
was for Bottee, the artist, a former recipient of the 
"Grand Prix de Rome," a work of love. It shows 
on one side the city rising from its ruins, sur- 
rounded with emblems of recovered youth and 
prosperity. On the other side the image of the 
French Republic is seen offering from over the sea 
a twig of laurel to America. 

One single copy in gold was struck, and the 
presentation took place in rebuilt San Francisco, 
in 1909, the medal being received by the states- 
man and poet, the translator of the sonnets of 
Heredia, Edward Robeson Taylor, then mayor 
of the city. 



VI 
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE NAME OF THE 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, PHILADEL- 
PHIA, JANUARY 17, 1913 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

WE meet on a solemn occasion. 
One has recently disappeared from our 
midst whose work was a model; whose 
life, too, was a model ; whose benign influence, ex- 
erted for many years from the seclusion of a quiet 
retreat, was felt far beyond the limits of his own 
country; whose views, always expressed in the 
gentlest terms, will outlive the thunder of many 
a noisy writer, as ever-renewing flowers survive 
earthquakes. 

A member of the American Philosophical So- 
ciety, founded in his own city by Franklin "to 
promote useful knowledge," Fumess was true to 
the motto of the society and lived the life of a true 
philosopher. I call him Fumess, without Doctor 
or any other title, not because he is no more, but 
to obey a request of his. "I do not like titles in 
the republic of letters," he wrote me in the early 
times of our acquaintance; "if you will drop all 
to me, I will do the same to you. One touch of 
Shakespeare makes the whole world kin." 

All those whom the spirit of philosophy has 
penetrated and who stanchly adhere to its ideal 
count among the noblest types of humanity and, 

319 



320 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

whatever their rank in Hfe or the period when 
they hved, resemble each other. When Furness 
died numerous eulogies, biographies, and portraits 
of him, penned, many of them, by the hands of 
masters, were published. I wonder if any better 
resembled him than this one: 

"Remember his constancy in the fulfilling of the 
dictates of reason, the evenness of his humor at 
all junctures, the serenity of his face, his extreme 
gentleness, his scorn for vainglory, his applica- 
tion to penetrate the meaning of things. He 
never dismissed any point without having first 
well examined and well understood it. He bore 
unjust reproaches without acrimony. He did 
nothing with undue haste. ... A foe to slander, 
he was neither hypercritical, nor suspicious, nor 
sophistical. He was pleased with little, modest in 
his house, his clothing, his food. He loved work, 
ate soberly, and thus was able to busy himself, 
for the whole day, with the same problems. Let 
us remember how constant and equable was his 
friendship, with what open mind he accepted a 
frank contradiction of his own views, with what 
joy he received advice that proved better than 
his own, and the kind of piety, free from all super- 
stition, that was his. Do as he did, and your 
last hour will be comforted, as his was, by the 
conscience of the good accomplished." 

In those higher regions where true philosophers 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 321 

live, equality reigns ; they resemble each other by 
their virtues; this portrait, which, to my mind, 
gives such a vivid idea of the life Fumess led at 
Wallingford, near Philadelphia, was drawn eight- 
een centuries ago, by that noblest of antique 
minds. Emperor Marcus Aurelius, describing his 
predecessor, the first of the Antonines, he who, 
on the last night of his life, being asked for the 
password, had answered: "^quanimitas." 

After studies at Harvard and Philadelphia and 
a visit to Europe and the Levant, having taken 
such part in the Civil War as his infirmity allowed 
him, a happy husband, a happy father, Horace 
Howard Fumess decided to devote his life to the 
"promotion of useful knowledge." He withdrew, 
in a way, from the world, settling in a quiet re- 
treat, and started on his life's work with the equip- 
ment of a modem scientist and the silent en- 
thusiasm, the indefatigable energy of mediaeval 
thinkers, the compilers of SummcB of times gone, 
regretting nothing, happy with his lot, at one with 
that master mind of old English literature, the 
author of Piers Plowman. "For," said centuries 
ago the man "robed in russet," 

" If heaven be on this erthe ' and ese to any soule, 
It is in cloistre or in scole * be many skilles I finde; 
For in cloistre cometh no man ' to chide ne to fihte, 
But all is buxomnesse there and bokes ' to rede and to 
lerne." 



322 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

Such a cloister, with ease to his soul, with bux- 
omness, with books to read and learn, was for 
our departed friend his house in Wallingford, 
where he lived surrounded by that extraordinarily 
gifted family of his: a wife to whom we owe the 
Concordance to the poems of Shakespeare, a 
sister who translated for him the German critics, 
sons and a daughter and a sister's relative^ who 
have all made their mark in their country's lit- 
erature. There, for years, he toiled, never think- 
ing of self nor of fame, busy with his task, and 
even in his seclusion, with his tenderness of heart 
and ample sympathies, listening to 

The still sad music of humanity. 

What that task was all the world now knows. 
A passionate admirer of Shakespeare, he wanted 
to make accessible to all every criticism, informa- 
tion, comment, explanation concerning the poet 
which had appeared anywhere at any time. 
Each volume was to be a complete encyclopaedia 
of all that concerned each play. The first ap- 
peared in 1 87 1, the sixteenth is the last he will 
have put his hand to. 

In the introduction to each volume, his pur- 
poses and methods are explained, and never has 
any writer more completely and more unwittingly 
allowed us to look into his own character than 
' Owen Wister. 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 323 

Fumess when writing what he must have con- 
sidered his very impersonal statements. What 
strikes the reader, before all, is the philosophical 
spirit which pervades the whole work. A worthy- 
member of the American Philosophical Society, 
he wanted to be "useful." Lives are and will be 
more and more encumbered; the acquisition of 
knowledge should, therefore, be made more and 
more easy of reach. "To abridge the labor and 
to save the time of others" was, said he in his 
first volimie, what impelled him to write. No 
pains of his were spared to lessen those of others. 
And all specialists know the extraordinary relia- 
bility of his texts and statements. "Nowhere, 
perhaps," Sir Sidney Lee wrote in his Life of 
Shakespeare, "has more labor been devoted to 
the study of the works of the poet than that given 
by Mr. H. H. Fumess, of Philadelphia, to the 
preparation of the new Variorum edition." 

The labor was one of love, and a lover naturally 
forgets himself for the beloved one. Furness tried 
not to show the ardor of his sentiments; but it 
now and then appears, usually in small details 
when he would, more naturally, be off his guard. 
Shakespeare calls Caesar's Ambassador Thidias, 
and not Thyreus, as the later-day editors do, 
under pretense that it was the real name. They 
are wrong: "Shakespeare in his nomenclature 
was, as in all things, exquisite. . . . For certain 



324 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

reasons (did he ever do anything without reason ?) 
he chose the name of Thidias. . . ." 

In the privacy of intimate correspondence Fur- 
ness would be more outspoken, being not restrained 
by the thought that he would be imposing his 
own views upon the mass of readers. On Cleo- 
patra, about whom I had risked opinions somewhat 
different from his, he wrote me — it seems it was 
yesterday: "Of course, Shakespeare's Cleopatra 
is not history. But who cares for history ? Of 
this be assured, that, if you had lived with her as 
I have for two years, you would adore her as 
deeply as I do." 

The truth is that, as he said, he actually lived 
with the personages of the plays, and he raptur- 
ously listened to those far-off voices, which came 
clearer to his infirm ears than to those of any one 
of us, meant only for commonplace uses. He had 
a better right than any to form an opinion, but 
was ever afraid to seem to force it on others. Of 
his edition itself he had written : " I do not flatter 
myself that this is an enjoyable edition of Shake- 
speare. I regard it rather as a necessary evil."* 
On another occasion, having been criticised about 
a certain statement of his, he wrote: "I now wish 
to state that my critic was entirely right and I 
entirely wrong." His work was a work of love, 
but it was also a work of reason, as befits a phi- 

* Introduction to Hamlet. 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 325 

losopher. He leaned throughout toward conser- 
vative methods, which have doubtless the fault 
of attracting less tumiiltuous attention to the 
worker: a great fault in the eyes of the many, a 
great quality in Fumess's own. 

His shrewd good sense, seconded by a no less 
enjoyable good humor, never failed him. When 
he began, one important question had first to be 
decided: would he admit in his work only tex- 
tual and philological criticisms or also aesthetic 
criticism, mere poetry, sheer literature ? To many 
the temptation woiild have been great to exclude 
the latter, the fashion being among the most 
haughty, if not the most learned, of the learned 
to doubt the seriousness, laboriousness, usefulness 
of any who can enjoy, in a play of Shakespeare's, 
something else than doubtful readings and mis- 
prints. This school is less new than is generally 
believed, and in his Temple du Gout Voltaire had 
already represented the superb critics of the 
matter-of-fact school answering those who asked 
them whether they would not visit the temple: 

" Nous, Messieurs, point du tout. 
Ce n'est pas la, grace a Dieu, notre etude; 
Le gout n'est rien, nous avons I'habitude 
De rediger au long, de point en point, 
Ce qu'on pensa, mais nous ne pensons point." 

The fact is that, as Fumess well perceived from 
the first, the two elements should no more be 



326 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

separated than soul from body. Without accu- 
racy, Hterary criticism is mere trumpery ; without 
a sense of the beautiful, mere accuracy is death- 
like. Much so-called aesthetic criticism, wrote 
Fumess, "is flat, stale, unprofitable. . . . But 
shall we ignore the possible existence of a keener 
insight than our own ? . . . Are we not to listen 
eagerly and reverently when Coleridge or Goethe 
talks about Shakespeare?" 

With such a rule in mind he made his selections, 
pruning what he deemed should be pruned: "re- 
jectiones et exclusiones debitas,'' as Bacon would 
have said. But one more kind of thing he ex- 
cluded, and this is an eminently characteristic 
trait of his. His gentleness (not a weak, but a 
manly one) rebelled at others' acerbity, and when 
he saw appear that unwelcome and somewhat 
abundant element in modern criticism, he simply 
left it out: no admittance for any such thing 
within the covers of a gentleman-scholar's gentle- 
manly and scholarly work. True it is that, while 
Shakespeare is the author most read — after the 
Bible, it is also the one about which the most furi- 
ous and unchristian disputes have been waged 
—after the Bible. The Philadelphia scholar 
wanted all the critics admitted within his fold 
to keep the peace there, and he adopted the fol- 
lowing rule: "First, all unfavorable criticism of 
fellow critics is excluded as much as possible. . . . 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 327 

To confound Goethe, Schlegel, or Tieck is one 
thing, to elucidate Shakespeare is another." He 
went even further, and since he could not quote 
whole books and had to select, "the endeavor," 
he said, "in all honesty has been to select from 
every author the passages wherein he appears to 
best advantage." What critic, then, can be 
imagined so blind to the service rendered, so 
much in love with his own harshness, that would 
not feel toward Fumess as Queen Katharine 
toward Griffith: 

After my death I wish no other herald, 
No other speaker of my living actions. 
To keep mine honor from corruption. 
But such an honest chronicler as — Furness. 

His friendly appreciation of French critics (who, 
with all they lacked in early days, were, after all, 
the first to form, outside of England, an opinion 
on Shakespeare, the oldest one being of about 
1680) cannot but touch a French heart. "It has 
given me especial pleasure," he said in the Intro- 
duction to his first volume, "to lay before the 
English reader the extracts from the French ; it is 
but little known, in this country at least, outside 
the ranks of Shakespeare students, how great is 
the influence which Shakespeare at this hour is 
exerting on French literature, and how many and 
how ardent are his admirers in this nation." He 



328 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

had even, at a later date, a good word for poor 
Duels and his Hamlet, a Hamlet truly Ducis's 
own. 

Nor shall I ever forget in what tones, amidst 
friendly applause, the great scholar spoke of 
France in his own city of Philadelphia, at the 
memorable gathering of April 20, 1906, when, in 
accordance with the will of the nation as expressed 
by Congress, a medal was offered to my country 
to commemorate her reception of Franklin at the 
hour when the fate of the States was still weigh- 
ing in the balance. 

In the early years of manhood one sees, far 
ahead on the road, those great thinkers, scien- 
tists, master men, tall, powerful, visible from a 
distance, ready to help the passer-by, like great 
oaks offering their shade. They seem so strong, 
so far above the common that the thought never 
occurs that we of the frailer sort may see the day 
when they will be no more. Who was ever pres- 
ent at the death of an oak ? Whoever thought 
that he could see the day when he would accom- 
pany Robert Browning's remains to Westminster 
or mourn for the disappearance of Taine or Gaston 
Paris ? The feeling I had for them I had for 
Furness, too. Was it possible to think that this 
solid oak would fall ? 

He himself, however, had misgivings, and it 
seemed, of late years, as if the dear ones who had 



HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 329 

gone before were beckoning to him. "Do you 
remember," he wrote me in 1909, "my sister, Mrs. 
Wister, to whom I had the pleasure of introduc- 
ing you at the Franklin celebration ? I am now 
living under the black and heavy shadow of her 
loss. She left me last November, solitary and 
alone, aching for the 'sound of a voice that is 
silent.'" And at a more recent date: "I have 
been so shattered by the blows of fate that I 
doubt you'll ever again receive a printed forget- 
me-not from me." 

And now, in our turn, members of the American 
Philosophical Society, members of the Shakespeare 
Societies of the world, members innumerable of 
the republic of letters, we too ache for "the sound 
of a voice that is silent." On the signet with 
which he used to seal his letters, Fumess had en- 
graved a motto, which is the best summing up 
of Emperor Marcus Aurelius's firm and resigned 
philosophy: "This, too, will pass away." 

For him, too, the august sad hour struck. But 
so far as anything in this fleeting world may be 
held to remain, so long as mankind shall be able 
to appreciate honest work honestly done, the 
name of Fumess will not pass away, but live en- 
shrined in every scholar's grateful memory. 



VII 
FROM WAR TO PEACE 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN 
SOCIETY FOR THE JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF IN- 
TERNATIONAL DISPUTES, DECEMBER 17, 1910 



FROM WAR TO PEACE ^ 

DOES peace mean progress ? Is the disap- 
pearance of war a sign of improvement or 
of decay ? At a yet recent date learned 
men, their eyes to their microscopes, were teach- 
ing us that among the various kinds of Hving 
creatures they had studied, war was the rule; 
that where struggle ceased, life ceased; and that, 
since more beings came into the world than the 
world could feed, the destruction of the weakest 
was both a necessity and a condition of progress. 
Struggle, war, violence meant development; 
peace meant decay. And a bold generalization 
applied to reasoning man the fate and conditions 
of unreasoning vermin. Since it was fate, why 
resist the inevitable and what could be the good 
of peace debates ? 

But the stumbling-block that Science had 
placed on the road to better days has been re- 
moved by Science herself. The sweeping con- 
clusions attributed to that great man Darwin by 
pupils less great have been scrutinized; other ex- 
periments, such as he would have conducted him- 

1 The text of this address is reproduced exactly as it was delivered, 
December 17, 19 10, only a few notes and references being added. 

333 



334 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

self had he been Hving, were tried, and their re- 
sults added to our book of knowledge. Great 
results, indeed, and notable ones; it turned out 
that the explanation of transformism, of progress, 
of survival, was not to be found in a ceaseless war 
insuring the predominance of the fittest, but in 
quiet and peaceful adaptation to environment, to 
climate, and to circumstances. And we French 
are excusably proud to see that, for having un- 
folded those truths years before Darwin wrote, 
due honor is now rendered almost everywhere, and 
especially in America, to Jean Baptiste de La- 
marck, author of the long obscure and now famous 
Philosophie Zoologique, 1809. 

As for the undue multiplication of individuals, 
statistics unknown to Darwin have since shown 
that, whatever may be the case with beetles or 
fishes (and let them work out their own problems 
according to their own laws), there is, for man at 
least, no need of self-destruction to ward off such 
a peril: the general decrease of the rate of re- 
production, so striking throughout the world, is 
all that is wanted, and in some cases is even 
more than is wanted. 

War, therefore, is not our unavoidable fate, and 
that much of the road has been cleared: a long 
road followed amid terrible sufferings by mankind 
through centuries. The chief danger in times 
past, and partly still in our own, does not result 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 335 

from an ineluctable fate, but from the private 
disposition of men and of their leaders. And we 
know what for ages those dispositions were. 
Former-day chroniclers are wont to mention, as 
a matter of course, that "the king went to the 
wars in the season," as he would have gone a-fish- 
ing. People at large saw not only beauty in war 
(as there is in a just war, and of the highest order, 
exactly as there is in every duty fulfilled), but they 
saw in it an unmixed beauty. Men and nations 
would take pride in their mercilessness, and they 
were apt to find in the sufferings of an enemy an 
unalloyed pleasure. 

Such were the feelings of the time. To none 
of the master artists who represented the day of 
judgment on the walls of Rome, Orvieto, or Padua, 
or on the portals of our northern cathedrals, did 
the thought occur to place among his fierce angels 
driving the guilty to their doom, one with a tear 
on his face: a tear that would have made the 
artist more famous than all his art; a tear, not 
because the tortures could be supposed to be un- 
just or the men sinless, but because they were 
tortures and because the men had been sinful. 
Dies ires! 

Artists belonged to their time and expressed 
their time's thought. The teaching of saints and 
of thinkers long remained of little avail. War, 
that "human malady," as Montaigne said, was 



336 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

considered as impossible to heal as rabies was — 
until the day when a Pasteur came. Yet protests 
began to be more perceptibly heard as men better 
understood what they themselves were and com- 
menced to suspect that the time might come 
when all would be equal before the law. Nothing, 
Tocqueville has observed, is so conducive to 
mercy as equality.^ 

All those who, in the course of centuries, led 
men to the conquest of their rights can be truly 
claimed as the intellectual ancestors of the present 
promoters of a sane international peace : men like 
our Jean Bodin, who, while upholding, as was 
unavoidable in his day, the principle of autocracy, 
yet based his study of the government of nations 
on the general interests of the commonwealth, 
and who, in opposition to Machiavelli, who had 
called his book The Prince, called his The Republic. 
To Bodin, who protests against the so-called 

^ On this he is very insistent. He speaks of "cette disposition 3, 
la pitie que I'egalite inspire." According to him, "les passions 
guerrieres deviendront plus rares et moins vives, a mesure que les 
conditions seront plus egales," and elsewhere: "Lorsque le principe 
de I'egaHt^ ne se developpe pas seulement chez une nation, mais en 
meme temps chez plusieurs peuples voisins . . . ils congoivent 
pour la paix un meme amour . . . et finissent par considerer la 
guerre comme une calamite presque aussi grande pour le vainqueur 
que pour le vaincu." But this goal has not yet been reached, and 
in the meantime, "quel que soit le gout que ces nations aient pour la 
paix, il faut bien qu'elles se tiennent pretes a repousser la guerre ou, 
en d'autres termes, qu'elles aient une armee." Democratie en Ameri- 
qiie, 14th ed., 1865, III, 444, 445, 473, 474. 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 337 

right of the strongest, have been traced some 
of the principles embodied much later in the 
American and in the French "Declaration of 
the Rights of Man.''^ 

Such thinkers truly deserve the name of fore- 
runners; such men as that great Hugo Grotius, 
whose ever-living fame was not without influence 
on the selection of his own country as the seat of 
the peace conferences of our day, and who, being 
then settled in France, near Senlis, dedicated to 

' Les six livres de la Republique de Jean Bodin, Angevin, Paris, 
1576; innumerable editions, so great was the success. The work is 
expressly written in opposition to that of Machiavelli, " this procurer 
of tyrants." Kings may be a necessity, yet the thing of the state 
is not theirs, but is the common property of the citizens, res publica. 
No one on board the ship can play the part of an onlooker, especially 
in stormy weather; all on board must bestir themselves and bring 
such help as they can: "Depuis que I'orage impetueux a tourmente 
le vaisseau de nostre Republique avec telle violence que le Patron 
mesme et les pilotes sont comme las et recreus (worn out) d'un travail 
continuel, il faut bien que les passagers y prestent la main, qui aux 
voiles, qui aux cordages, qui a I'ancre, et ceux a qui la force man- 
quera, qu'ils donnent quelque bon advertissement, ou qu'ils pre- 
sentent leurs voeux et prieres a Celuy qui pent commander aux vents 
et appaiser les tempestes, puisque tons ensemble courent un mesme 
danger." (Preface, to the magistrate and poet, the friend of Ron- 
sard, Guy du Faur de Pibrac.) For Bodin, peace is the ideal; yet 
"war must be waged to repel violence, in case of necessity. . . . 
The frontier of a well-ordered republic is justice, and not the point 
of the lance." ("La frontiere d'une republique bien ordonnee est 
la justice . . . et non pas la pointe de la lance.") Such is the ideal, 
but since it has not been reached yet, the keeping up of a permanent 
military force is a necessity, "and to bestow on it a third of the 
revenue is not too much," especially when you have warlike neigh- 
bors, which is the case of "peoples living in fertile and temperate 
regions, like France." Bk. V, chap. 5. 



338 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

King Louis XIII his famous work on war and 
peace, so memorable for its denunciation of frivo- 
lous wars and wanton cruelties.^ 

Soon the names of those to be honored for the 
same cause became legion: men like Pascal, 
Saint-Pierre, the Encyclopedists, Kant, Bentham, 
Tocqueville, and many others. 

Among Pascal's Thoughts is this memorable one, 
which forecasts and sums up much of what has 
since been or will be done: "When it is a ques- 
tion of deciding whether war should be waged, 
of sentencing so many Spaniards to death, one 
man only decides, and one who is interested. 
The decision ought to rest with an impartial third 
party." 

A little later, that strange Abbe de Saint-Pierre 
was writing those works considered as so many 
wild dreams in his day and no longer read at all 
in ours. But if he were to return now, he would, 
according to one of his latest critics, feel not at 
all dismayed, but say: "This is all for the best; 
you need not study my works, since you have 
put in practise nearly all my ideas ; there remains 
only my Perpetual Peace ;^ but, like the others, 
its turn will come." 

' De Jure Belli ac Pacts Libri III, Paris, 1625. 

• Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe, 1713-17^ 3 
vols. The abbe dreamed of a league of all governments in favor of 
peace; any of them breaking the pledge, to be attacked by the others. 
Differences between states should be arbitrated. A French prede- 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 339 

If its turn has not come yet, great practical 
steps have surely been taken toward it, chief 
among them that move, so unexpected a few 
years ago, so dubiously wondered at when it oc- 
curred, and now so thoroughly accepted, that, as 
in the case of all great inventions, one wonders 
how things could go on before it existed : the call- 
ing of the first conference at The Hague by the 
Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II. 

"The maintenance of general peace," read the 
Russian circular of August, 1898, "and a possible 
reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh 
upon all nations, present themselves in the actual 
situation of the world, as the ideal toward which 
should tend the efforts of all governments. . . . 
The ever-increasing financial expense touches pub- 
lic prosperity at its very source; the intellectual 
and physical powers of peoples, labor and capital, 
are, most of it, turned aside from their natural 
functions and consimied unproductively. . . . 

cessor of the abbe had been Emeric Cruce, whose Nouveau Cynee ou 
Discours d'Estat representant les occasions et moyens d'establir une paix 
generate et ta liberie dii commerce par tout le mondc, was published in 
Paris, 1623 (modern edition, with an English translation by T. W. 
Balch, Philadelphia, 1909). Cruce was in favor of the establishment 
at Venice of a Supreme Court of Arbitration, in which every sovereign 
would have had his representative: "If any one rebelled against the 
decree of so notable a company, he would receive the disgrace of all 
other princes, who would find means to bring him to reason" (Balch 's 
ed., p. 104) — a plan which, in fact, is still under discussion. 

In connection with the works of these theorists should be read, 
e. g., Alberico Gentili's De Jure Belli, 1588-98. 



340 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

To put an end to those ceaseless armaments and 
to find means for preventing the calamities which 
threaten the entire world, such is the supreme 
duty which to-day lies upon all states." 

When one man, then another, then another, had 
come and said: I can draw the lightning from 
the clouds; I can rise in the air; I can flash your 
words and thoughts to any distance you please; 
I can cure rabies by inoculating rabies; I can 
make you talk with your friend miles away; I 
can navigate a boat under the sea, scepticism had 
scarcely been greater than when the circular took 
the world by smprise. The issue seemed more 
than doubtful; many among the most sanguine 
barely hoped to succeed in preventing the abso- 
lute failure that would have killed such a project 
for generations. 

Shortly afterward I happened to be in St. 
Petersburg and had the honor of being received 
by the Emperor. The conversation fell on the 
"Great Design," to give it the name used for the 
very different plan (implying coercion) attributed 
two centuries before to the French King Henry 
IV. I was struck by the quiet conviction of the 
originator of the new movement as to its ultimate 
results, and his disposition not to give up the 
plan if at first it met with difficulties and delays. 
Emperor Nicholas summed up his views with 
the remark: "One must wait longer when plant- 
ing an oak than when planting a flower." 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 341 

Longer, indeed, yet not so very long, after all. 
The first conference took place, and in it, I may 
say, the delegations of our two Republics presided 
over by such statesmen and thinkers as Andrew 
D. White and Leon Bourgeois, failed not to fulfill 
the part assigned to our democracies by their 
ideals and traditions. In spite of scepticism, that 
first conference reached an unexpected measure 
of success. Eight years later a second one was 
convened on the felicitous suggestion of President 
Roosevelt, and now the supposedly useless mech- 
anism from dreamland has been so heartily 
accepted by mankind at large, all over the globe, 
that the approximate date for a third one has 
already been selected. Governments at first 
doubted that one would be of any use; now they 
want more. 

The word had been spoken indeed at the proper 
moment. The teachings of philosophers and of 
experience, the outcome of revolutions, a more 
vivid sense of equality among men imbuing them 
with mercy, according to Tocqueville, had caused 
the seed to fall on prepared groimd. We scarcely 
realize, looking at it from so near, how great the 
movement thus started has already become. The 
practical ideas put forth less than a dozen years 
ago have progressed so much that more treaties 
of arbitration have been signed between the first 
Hague Conference and now than between the 
day of creation and that conference. I take, if 



342 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

I may be permitted to allude to my own feelings, 
no small pride in having concluded the first one, 
duly ratified by both countries, ever signed by 
the United States with any European Power, and 
I was glad to thus continue an old-established 
tradition, since, in the matter of treaties with the 
United States, be they treaties of commerce, alli- 
ance, or amity, France has been accustomed to 
take the lead among nations.^ 

Quicker, indeed, than was anticipated by the 
sower himself, the oak has grown and the nations 
can rest under its shade. Several important ap- 
peals have been made to the court of The Hague, 
the United States taking the lead and giving to 
all the best example. Those experiments, which 
most of the great Powers have already tried, have 
had manifold advantages: they have shown that 
dangerous quarrels could thus be honorably set- 
tled; they have shown also that defects in the 
working of the court exist and should be remedied. 

Public utterances and circulars from Presidents 
Roosevelt and Taft and from Secretaries of State 
Root and Knox have pointed out the importance 
of trying to establish a permanent court, with 
judges ever present, paid by the associated nations, 

^ First (and only) treaty of alliance, 1778; first treaty of amity 
and commerce, 1778; first consular convention, 1788; first treaty 
for the aggrandizement of the territory of the United States, 1803. 
The only example lacking, and for good reasons, is that of a treaty 
of peace following a war. 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 343 

selected from among men of such a high moral 
standing as to be above influence of creed or na- 
tionality, true citizens of the world, fit magis- 
trates to judge the world. 

In these views, the future realization of which 
the second conference has insured, France heartily 
concurred, having indeed, during the first confer- 
ence, initiated an early preliminary move toward 
continuity and permanence. 

Given these more and more enlightened disposi- 
tions among governments, it may seem that the 
work of a private society like this must needs be 
of comparatively little import. The reverse is 
the truth. It has an immense power for good, 
for it can act directly on the lever that moves the 
world: public opinion. So powerful is such a 
lever that even in the past, in times when men 
were not their own masters, public opinion had 
to be reckoned with; such imperious leaders of 
men as a Richelieu or a Napoleon knew it better 
than any one. Opinio veriiate major, had even 
cynically said the great philosopher Francis Bacon. 
But if opinion can occasionally defeat truth, much 
better can it defend truth. With the spreading of 
instruction and with an easier access to men's 
minds through books, journals, public meetings, 
and free discussion, its power against truth has 
been considerably diminished and its power for 
good increased and purified. 



344 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

You know this and act accordingly. Though 
doing so in your private capacity, you conform 
in fact to the instructions drawn by a masterly 
hand for the American delegates at the second 
conference at The Hague. In these instructions 
Secretary Root told the delegates never to forget 
that "the object of the conference was agreement, 
not compulsion," and that the agreements reached 
should be "genuine and not reluctant." 

This is, undoubtedly, the road to follow, a road 
not yet smooth, nor cleared of its rocks and pit- 
falls. The dangers continue to be many. One 
of the dangers is of asking too much too soon 
and of causing nations to fear that, if they make 
any little concession, they will be led by degrees 
to a point where, being peacefully disarmed, their 
continuance as a nation will depend upon the will, 
the good faith and the excellent virtues of some 
one else. Another is to describe war as being 
such an abominable thing in itself, whatever be 
its occasion, as to cause that public opinion on 
which so much depends to rebel against the 
preacher and his whole doctrine. 

Let us not forget that, even in the land of 
"Utopia," the country of Nowhere, in which 
every virtue of good citizenship was practised, 
and war held as a monstrosity, rem plane heluinam, 
all wars had not been abolished. Sir Thomas 
More informs us that Utopians make war for 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 345 

two causes and keep, therefore, well drilled. The 
causes are : First, ' ' to defend their own country ' ' ; 
second, "to drive out of their friends' land the 
enemies that have invaded it." ^ We have waged 
in the past such wars and cannot pretend to feel 
repentant. 

Such wars continue to be unavoidable to-day, 
and to deny this is only to increase the danger of 
a revulsion of feeling among well-disposed nations. 
What we may hope and must strive for is that, 
with the development of mankind, a better knowl- 
edge of our neighbors, an understanding that a 
difference is not necessarily a vice, nor a criticism 
a threat, with that better instruction which a 
society like this one is giving to the many, a time 
may come when that same public opinion will 
render impossible the two sorts of casus belli for 
which More deems war to be not only necessary 
but noble and virtuous. 

No less dangerous is it to load war with all the 
sins in Israel, thus running the same risk of mak- 

1 "Thoughe they do daylie practise and exercise themselves in the 
disciphne of warre, and not onelie the men but also the women upon 
certen appointed daies, lest they should be to seke {inhabiles in the 
Latin) in the feate of armes, if nede should require, yet they never 
go to battell, but either in defence of their owne countrey, or to 
drive out of their frendes lande the enemies that have invaded it, or 
by their power to deliver from the yocke and bondage of tirannye 
some people, that be therewith oppressed. Which thing they do of 
meere pitie and compassion." Ralph Robinson's translation, ist 
ed., 1551; ed. Arber, p. 132. 



346 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

ing people rebel not only against the preacher but 
against his very creed. When we are told by the 
pacifist that, owing to the wars of the early nine- 
teenth century, only inferior people were left in 
France to perpetuate the race, we wonder how it 
is that she got a Victor Hugo, an Alexandre 
Dumas, a Louis Pasteur, sons of soldiers of Napo- 
leon, all three. We wonder how, in spite of this 
supposed survival of "the weakest," that coun- 
try got so many thinkers, philosophers, poets, 
artists, soldiers, explorers; how the venturous 
spirit of the former "coureurs de bois" awoke 
again in our days with such notable results in 
Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; how birth was given 
in our land to the inventors of the dirigible, the 
automobile, the submarine, photography, and 
radium; how the love of sport in the race has re- 
appeared of late, as active as it had ever been in 
the remote times when football and cricket found 
in France their rough-hewn cradle. 

Exaggeration will not help, but on the contrary 
surely hurt. Truth, if we follow her, is certain 
to lead to better times. She has already. Wars 
in former centuries lasted a hundred years, then 
they lasted thirty years, then seven years; and 
now, as disastrous as ever, it is true, but separated 
by longer intervals, they last one year.^ You are 

^ Most of them much less. In this, however, as in so many other 
respects, the present war, declared by Germany against Russia, 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 347 

about to celebrate a hundred years' peace with 
England; so are we. 

That move toward truer, longer, perhaps one 
day definitive peace, has been prophesied long be- 
fore our time, not merely by a dreamer like Abbe 
de Saint-Pierre, but by one who had a rare experi- 
ence of men, of war, and of peace, and who, con- 
sidering especially the influence of trade on na- 
tions, once said: 

"Although I pretend to no pectiliar informa- 
tion respecting commercial affairs, nor any fore- 
sight into the scenes of futurity, yet as the mem- 
ber of an infant empire, as a philanthropist by 
character, and (if I may be allowed the expression) 
as a citizen of the great republic of humanity at 
large, I cannot help turning my attention some- 
times to this subject. I would be understood to 
mean that I cannot help reflecting with pleasure 
on the probable influence that commerce may 
hereafter have on human manners and society in 
general. On these occasions I consider how man- 
kind may be connected like one great family in 
fraternal ties. I indulge a fond, perhaps an en- 
thusiastic idea that, as the world is evidently 
less barbarous than it has been, its amelioration 
must still be progressive; that nations are be- 

August I, 1914 (five days before Austria could be persuaded to act 
likewise), against France the 3d, against Belgium the 4th, which 
was tantamount to declaring it on England too, is an exception. 



348 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

coming more humanized in their poHcy, that the 
subjects of ambition and causes for hostility are 
daily diminishing; and in fine that the period is 
not very remote when the benefits of a liberal 
and free commerce will pretty generally succeed 
to the devastations and horrors of war." 

Thus wrote to Lafayette, on the 15th of August, 
1786, that "citizen of the great republic of human- 
ity," George Washington.^ 

That practical results have been secured is cer- 
tain ; that better ones are in store, if we act wisely, 
is no less certain. Mankind longs for less troubled 
days, and moves toward this not inaccessible 
goal. Such is the truth; and we may feel con- 
fident that, according to the oft-quoted word of 
dying Wyclif, "Truth shall conquer." 

^ In connection with Washington's views, those of Franklin con- 
cerning amicable relations between great countries may appropri- 
ately be quoted. He wrote from Passy, on October i6, 1783, to his 
friend David Hartley, one of the British plenipotentiaries for the 
peace: "What would you think of a proposition, if I sh'd make it 
of a family compact between England, France, and America? Amer- 
ica would be as happy as the Sabine girls if she could be the means 
of uniting in perpetual peace her father and her husband. What re- 
peated follies are those repeated wars ! You do not want to con- 
quer and govern one another. Why, then, should you continually 
be employed in injuring and destroying one another? How many 
excellent things might have been done to promote the internal wel- 
fare of each country; what bridges, roads, canals, and other public 
works and institutions tending to the common felicity, might have 
been made and established with the money and men foolishly spent 
during the last seven centuries by our mad wars in doing one another 
mischief!" Works, ed. Smythe, IX, 107. 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 349 



A POSTSCRIPT 

A few years after this address had been de- 
livered threatening clouds began to gather. Ger- 
many, who had prevented, at the first conference 
of The Hague, anything being done toward a 
limitation of armaments as proposed by Russia,'- 
suddenly, in full peace, when other nations were 
inclined to think that they were rather too much 
armed than not enough, passed a law increasing, 
in a prodigious degree, her military forces. 

On this move of hers, on what peace-loving 
democracies ought to do in the presence of such 
an unexpected event, on the future of the peace 
and arbitration ideas, after such a blow, the 
former president of the French delegation at The 
Hague, Mr. Leon Bourgeois, wrote in May, 19 13, 
little more than a year before the present war, a 
noteworthy letter,- in which we read: 

"One fact strikes us most painfully and might 
at first disturb our minds. The bills presently 
submitted to the Reichstag are going to increase 
in a formidable manner the armaments of Ger- 
many, and to necessitate on the part of France an 

^ "Notwithstanding the support given to the Russian proposition 
by France, one of the most martial of the nations, and by various 
other governments, the objections voiced by the German delegates 
were too serious to be overcome." John W. Foster, Arhitration and 
The Hague Court, Boston, 1904, p. 32. 

''Text, e.g., in the Temps, May 12, 1913. 



350 FROM WAR TO PEACE 

extraordinary effort, and sacrifices to which we 
must manfully and promptly consent. . . . 

"No one more than myself deplores that folly 
of armaments to which Europe is yielding, and I 
do not forget that it was I who, in 1899, ^.t the 
first Hague Conference, drew up and defended the 
resolution in favor of a limitation of the military 
load weighing on the world. But I do not forget 
either what I said before the Senate, in 1907, after 
the second conference: 'As for us, confirmed par- 
tisans of arbitration and peace, disarmament is a 
consequence, not a preparation. For disarmament 
to be possible, one must first feel that one's right 
is secure. The security of right is what must be 
organized first of all. Behind that rampart alone, 
nations will be able to lay down their arms. . . . 

"Let us be pacific, but let us be strong. And 
let us know how to wait. The very excess of the 
load weighing on Europe will originate, sooner 
than is sometimes believed, that irresistible move- 
ment of opinion which will cause a policy of wis- 
dom, mutual respect, and real security, to be- 
come an unavoidable necessity." 

The chief factor will be public opinion. Present 
events will, one may hope, have served to educate 
public opinion throughout the world. 



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